


Street Sweepers, Night Watchmen, Flame Keepers

by Deepdarkwaters, thekookster



Series: Flame Keepers [2]
Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-22
Updated: 2015-08-22
Packaged: 2018-04-16 15:07:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 36,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4629843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deepdarkwaters/pseuds/Deepdarkwaters, https://archiveofourown.org/users/thekookster/pseuds/thekookster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry survived V-Day - because of course he did - but not all the Kingsman agents were so lucky. With the world still going to shit and the worst staff shortage since the organisation began, Merlin calls a group of retired agents back to their posts to help out while he trains the new recruits.</p><p>Featuring snowball fights, banter, innuendo, handsome old men, lady scientists, secrets in walking sticks, Harry’s appalling crush, thumbnails of bigger pictures, a pastede on plot crammed in around all the flirting which is really just an excuse for me to write a silly sword fight, and an old bet from 1986 that’s still not been decided.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Street Sweepers, Night Watchmen, Flame Keepers

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Street Sweepers, Night Watchmen, Flame Keepers](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10626354) by [chatain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chatain/pseuds/chatain)



> Big Bang fic! Words by Deepdarkwaters, art by thekookster. Group hug: L & D for putting up with seven months of endless ranting about this film, L & S for encouragement and advice about how to knock this plotless behemoth into a postable state, and Kook for being a total delight. Lucan's ghost story is taken almost verbatim from one of her emails (with permission) because it made me laugh.
> 
> Title from [Tom Traubert's Blues](http://youtu.be/9ZmqbcBsTAw) by Tom Waits.
> 
> Update: [chatain](http://archiveofourown.org/users/chatain) has translated this story into Russian and you can read it [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10626354)!

_There is no old age. There is, as there always was, just you."  
\- Carol Matthau_

Saving the world isn't exactly something Eggsy's daydreamed about before, but if he had then this isn't how he'd have imagined it feeling. There should be something jubilant in it, surely, some kind of staggering sense of power and justice served. Really he's so fucking wiped he could fall asleep on his feet and let them carry on walking him round the tunnels of Valentine's stupid Bond villain lair, let his mouth carry on giving directions and reassurance to the flood of released prisoners like a programmed robot: _just follow the others, sir_ and _any pilots this way please_ and _you're welcome, madam, just doing my job_ until he half forgets who he is.

For what seems like about the seventeen thousandth time he turns into yet another tunnel full of frightened people and tries to shout for attention, manners be damned, but there's so much noise that eventually he resorts to sticking his fingers in his mouth and whistling so loudly it makes people wince. They turn to look at him, a mismatched huddle of politicians and actors and footballers and royalty, tiptoeing and craning to look over each other's heads. He wishes he had a box to stand on or something. Wonders what Tom Hardy or Vin Diesel would say if he asked them for a shoulder ride, then feels the weirdest rising bubble of hysteria threatening to overwhelm him and chews his lip hard until he's under control.

"Ladies and gentlemen. Can anybody else here fly a plane?"

Hours later, fucking _hours_ , he gets to the bottom of the Kingsman plane steps and sort of wants to collapse there and cry rather than drag himself up them. The adrenaline's all gone and the crushing exhaustion that takes its place is so much worse than the pain now singing with his heartbeat through the bruises and lacerations from his fight with Valentine's henchlady and all those thudding bullets stopped by his suit. He groans, then sort of laughs at how pitiful he sounds and finally hauls himself up to the door.

"Oh, hello," Merlin says mildly. He's sitting in the desk chair with his back to the closed monitors, one ankle propped on the opposite knee and a glass of whiskey and ice dangling from his fingertips. The look on his face could be anything. That fucking raised eyebrow could mean anything. "Diplomatic relations with Sweden still strong, I hope?"

"You're a disgusting animal," Roxy says before Eggsy can even open his mouth to reply. She's giving him that look she used to give to Charlie and Rufus, fierce eyes slightly narrowed and mouth set hard. "Your mum and sister are fine, by the way."

Something lifts a bit then, like a hand fisted tight around his heart grudgingly gives up three of its fingers. "Fucking Jesus fuck, thank you," he manages, coherency less a concern than earnest gratitude, and swipes Merlin's glass out of his hand as he finds a seat of his own and starts feeling himself up, taking stock of bruises and which ribs are probably cracked. "Animal yourself."

"Fucking _hell_ , Eggsy!"

"Rox, chill, seriously—"

"Don't you tell me _chill_ , I've just hiked through the bloody Arctic to get here while you were playing Austin Powers."

"Yeah, well, turns out it ain't that easy to get it up when someone opens all the cell doors and there's people all screaming and crying and shit right outside. Thanks, Merlin."

"My pleasure." He grabs his glass back, curling his hand around it possessively like a schoolboy trying to deter a cheat. "While you were fraternising—"

"I wasn't!"

"—I've been contacting the others. I'm afraid it's not looking good."

Eggsy backs down then, there's something in Merlin's grave expression that leaves no other option. He stops jamming his fingers into his bruises and meets Merlin's tired eyes, quietly asking, "How many? Who?"

"Arthur, of course. Tristan, Lionel, Bors and Ector had microchips too." He makes an entirely unnecessary explosive hand gesture beside his ear. "Brunor and his pilot crashed into the Carpathians when the signal went off, Palomides and Lamorak turned on each other on a mission in Rio, Safir was mauled to death walking his dog—"

"My god," Roxy says faintly. "It affected animals too?"

"No, from what I can tell he attacked her first and she fought back. Bedivere killed his driver and mowed down a crowd of people in Sydney before he crashed into the water. I lost the feeds for Gareth, Alymere and Pelleas when their glasses broke in the fray, but their trackers are flatlines."

"Merlin. Holy fuck." To Eggsy they're just names, some familiar and some not, people he saw around headquarters a few times during training and people he never met at all, but to Merlin they're colleagues at the very least, more likely friends, and now he's thinking about Jamal and Ryan and every brilliant time they've had since the day they met at nursery school and he can't comprehend that much loss. It's like trying to imagine the vastness of space or what's inside an atom, and his stomach seems to flip, sickened and panicked, the sudden urge to puke swallowed back with the most immense of efforts. "Mate, I'm so sorry."

"So that just leaves Percival, Lucan, Gawain, and Kay," Roxy says. Her eyes, warm and worried, don't leave Merlin's face. "And me. And Eggsy."

"Galahad." Merlin murmurs the name, almost as though he's thinking out loud, airing the idea so he can examine it more clearly. He shoves his glasses up to rest on the top of his head, digging his knuckles so fiercely into his exhausted eyes that for one horrified spiralling moment Eggsy thinks he's crying, and says it again, louder and firmer. "Galahad, Eggsy. Harry would've liked that."

And part of him wants to protest that, because fuck it's too soon and it's too much and it's just _too fucking soon_ , but Merlin stands then and clasps his shoulder briefly, showing Roxy the ghost of a smile before heading into the cockpit and closing the door.

"Can he do that?" Eggsy asks feebly. This should be a good thing, this job is what he's wanted since the moment Harry stood him in front of the fitting room mirror and started banging on about different paths and lame old films, but not like this. "Rox. I didn't pass. Can he just...?"

"I suppose he's the de facto leader, without an Arthur. And I'm pretty sure saving the world counts for more than not shooting your dog." She switches seats, taking the one Merlin just vacated so she can reach across the space between them and wind her fingers together with Eggsy's, giving him a comforting sort of squeeze. "Congratulations, Galahad."

"Don't. Please. Just gimme a minute, alright?"

Somehow now it's all over, the worst thing, the most awful fucking harrowing painful thing, is the tattered remnant of his tie. He winds it round his hand, sweat and blood and the smooth weave of the silk slithering through his fingers, and it's impossible now not to think of Harry. He was there all along, a hovering presence in the back of Eggsy's mind, but without anything else now to concentrate on he creeps forward and fills the world, like he always did: his smile, his frown, his hands on their guns, belief and disappointment and that refined accent stretching lewdly around swear words and innuendo. It's beyond crying now – Eggsy got all that useless shit out of the way in the stunned moments after the gunshot and a quick frantic four minute breakdown in the plane toilet on the way to Valentine's, snot streaming like a nosebleed and hand crammed in his mouth to stifle the desperate noises – but the emptiness is so much worse, this hideous ache of loss for something barely realised.

"Taking off." Merlin's voice comes through the speaker above the cockpit door, as clear as if he's still back there with them. "Let's go home. Start cleaning up this mess. Get some sleep if you can, I doubt there'll be much of it for a while."

 _Sleep_ , Eggsy thinks miserably, _as if_ , and promptly crashes out right there in his chair within minutes. He wakes some hours later with the foul taste of old blood in his mouth and a sore neck, disoriented and blinking in the dimmed lights of the cabin.

"Rox?" he mumbles. "Fuck, sorry, never meant to pass out."

"It's alright, I enjoyed the peace and quiet." She grins at him quickly, the small sideways sort with no real humour in it, and turns back to the twin monitors currently showing a crowd of people in the Place de la Concorde. "I've found the missing agents. Pelleas is dead, Gareth's stabilised in hospital in Nairobi. Alymere's the last of them. Looks like someone drowned him in the fountain."

"Jesus," Eggsy mutters. "You think when you save the world then you fucking _save the world_ , but this is just..."

"It could've been worse. Think about it. We're looking at, from what I've seen, five-ish percent dead. It could've been eighty percent."

"I know that's good, but it don't exactly feel it right now."

"Go back to sleep, we'll be home in an hour." Then, into the headset mic, "Paris? Lancelot. Avez-vous les ressources pour une équipe de récupération? L'identification de Alymere doit être détruite, et je veux retourner son corps. Merci."

His French isn't that hot, but retourner son corps, he can figure that one out easily enough.

"Rox," he says again, wavering and quiet. "Can we get Harry's body back too?"

Without another word – because, seriously, words fucking suck and nothing's ever going to sound right about something like this, and Roxy's ace enough to get that – she minimises the satellite video of Paris and brings up Harry's glasses feed. The angle is crooked and strange, the blue sky filling the bottom of the frame and the pointed front of the church hanging down from the top. Eggsy looks away because fuck that, once was enough, he's got no intention of seeing Harry dead again. He should be helping, really – Galahad, what the fuck, it's awful and too much – but there's only the one computer and Roxy seems to have some kind of system. She knows what she's doing, he might as well get back to sleep while he can—

Then she sucks her breath in sharply, like she's got a pain somewhere, and Eggsy's eyes fly back open because noises like that don't fall out of people's faces without a fucking good reason.

"What is it?"

"Oh my god," she murmurs, like she's not even heard him. Her fingers tap rapidly at keys, bringing up another window like the Paris one and inputting coordinates she's pulled from somewhere, zooming in to an aerial view of the church and rewinding the footage.

"Roxy, what?"

Backwards, an ambulance pulls up in front of the church. Backwards, some rushing figures pull a stretcher out through the doors and lay Harry back down on the bloodstained concrete.

"He's in hospital," Roxy says, staring wide-eyed at Eggsy until something breaks and all his breath leaves him like he's been punched in the stomach only there are words in it, desperate shouted words, _Merlin Jesus please turn the plane around Merlin turn the fucking plane around it's Harry_

* * *

It takes a while for Merlin to stop making arch comments about people who don't know the longest and shortest ways around the globe from just east of England to Kentucky, but that's alright, Eggsy decides, whatever coping mechanism gets you through the day and all that. Merlin's gone brittle with nerves ever since V-Day – they all have, really, but his are especially prone to shatter at the slightest provocation now – so it seems best just to keep him topped up with tea, proper builders tea, and try not to walk too loudly in the corridors.

There's a meeting a couple of days after they make it back home, the surviving agents and all the staff that weren't either killed, severely injured, or tempted by Merlin's offer of early retirement for anyone who'd had enough. There are far too many of them for the various conference rooms and lounges so they gather outside, chatting in the late afternoon sun like it's some weird awkward garden party until Merlin shuts them up with a tired look and a single raised finger. He talks about what happened, the fucked up state of the world now, loss, survival, and opening up the recruitment process to anybody who wants to apply or propose a candidate. No point fucking about, is the gist of it all. We're a team, a huge brilliant mass of interlocking cogs. Let's work like one.

"If I weren't scared to death of him I'd knock him out with a dart and make him sleep for a week," someone mutters behind Eggsy. He half-turns at the voice and finds its owner, a stranger with neat blond hair and an easy grin, offering his hand to shake. "Kay."

"Eggsy. Er, well, Galahad, I suppose, but I dunno what's going on with that now Harry's—"

"Back from the dead like a bloody jack in the box? Takes more than a bullet to the face to kill old Hart, he's like a cat with nine hundred lives." He seems awfully chirpy for someone who's just lost seventy percent of his workmates to some pretty hideous violent deaths, but grief is there in the wry twist of his mouth as he's talking – a pragmatic sort of grief, though, one he can wear unobtrusively like a neat little tie clip as he goes about his day. "Terribly proud of you, you know. He never shut up during your training, he and Percival just got more and more smug as the weeks went on."

Surprise curls warm through his stomach, chased by a giddy sort of relief that makes his face hurt with smiling. "You for real?"

"Absolutely, bragged themselves hoarse til we were all sick to the back teeth of your names. We were almost glad for that coma."

 _Bloody well done_ echoes in his mind, like a moment of clarity amongst the crackling static of a twirling radio dial, and he remembers Harry's smile beaming down at him when he was tied to the train tracks with wobbly bowels and his heart still thudding in panic. Remembers everything after, too: martini lessons (Harry, surprised: "that's actually not too bad at all for a gin virgin"), a quick hour of elocution ("So, what, 'the rayn in Spayn' and all that?" "No, Eggsy. I've heard you impersonating Merlin, I know you can do this. Watch my mouth and follow."), then a curry takeaway on the couch at four in the morning and Harry's considering eyes on Eggsy's face, the quirk of a pleased smile behind his beer bottle, and the absolute sincerity when he quietly said, "I know he'd be proud of you now." It's all been overshadowed by that excruciating disappointed glare from Harry's office balcony – it's woken him up sweating and queasy in his bed like some fucking awful nightmare monster – but for the first time since it happened, that agony of regret and humiliation for harsh defensive words spat in anger, Harry's as well as his own, feels a little bit less crushing.

"Who was your Lancelot candidate?" he asks, because it seems safer than spouting off about Harry. Can't fool a spy about the truth.

"I didn't have one, I was deep undercover on a mission at the time and didn't have a chance to find anybody. I've a few ideas for the new lot, though. How about you?"

"I dunno. Some mates from the Marines, maybe. My cousin Katy. She's rock hard, taught me everything I know." _Hotwires a car in like point three seconds and drives like a fucking dream. She nicked a double decker bus once, it was beautiful._ Can't really say that. "Need some more people round here who never went to Oxford or Cambridge, you get me?"

"Absolutely agree." There's a beep then from both of their glasses, a scrolling message across the bottom of the right lens reading _Kingsmen, please report to meeting room one immediately_ , and the two of them begin to weave amongst the crowd to get to the stairs. "More women, too. Arthur was a good leader before he lost his mind, but he was a miserable old reactionary. It was a woman who proposed him, you know, back in the fifties."

"Lillian Laurie." Merlin overtakes them on Eggsy's other side and holds the front door open for them. "Transferred to tech in 1979 when she thought her reflexes were slowing her down in the field and didn't retire til 1994 when she was 78. Absolutely terrifying, absolutely brilliant. She liked to remind us all of her hit count any time we got too loud."

"Who else was there?" Eggsy asks, fascinated as he and Kay follow Merlin into the meeting room. It's weird, he's never really considered the history of the place in anything other than an abstract sort of way, a bit of an explanation here and there from Harry and the familiar faces of the Kingsman founders on the dining room walls, but he's one of them now, he's been getting to know some of the people who make the place run, and somehow that makes everything feel so much real than all the training and tests ever did.

"Funny you should ask that, it's sort of what I've called the meeting for. Have a seat, sir."

"Jesus, Merlin, don't call me sir. You're the boss."

"It's protocol, sir." Bastard's smirking. Eggsy sits, waiting while the others all file in and get themselves settled, then Merlin starts handing out manila mission folders to everyone but him and Roxy. "Four senior agents alive and fit to work isn't enough, and training new recruits is not a quick process. We're putting as much on the back burner as possible, I'm only going to assign you things that can't wait. Lancelot and Galahad, ordinarily you'd be paired up with a senior agent for your first few missions, but we no longer have the luxury of time."

"Gis a folder, then," Eggsy says, but Merlin shakes his head.

"This is the most severe staff shortage in the history of this organisation. Even World War Two didn't affect us so badly – we recruited more women, like everyone else, and men denied from the military for stupid reasons. We've never had a sudden drop in numbers like this, and if we don't do something about it then we'll fold."

"So what do you suggest," Gawain asks, "speed up the recruitment process? Seems a little counter-productive to have a gaggle of foetuses skipping all over the world with barely a clue what they're doing."

"The opposite, in fact," Merlin says. "I'm going to ask the retired agents back. Hear me out," he interrupts, holding up a single commanding finger when Gawain starts to protest that as well. "They know how we work. They _invented_ how we work, plus most of our technology. They're all fully compos mentis. There's plenty we do here that doesn't involve somersaults and marathons. If we delegate the less physical work to them, recon, interrogation and so on, then the six of you can take what their hip replacements won't let them."

"You're actually serious," Gawain says with a frown crinkling the space between his eyebrows.

"I'm always serious, sir. Your plane to Mexico leaves in half an hour. Lancelot, Galahad, Lucan, come with me. You're the prettiest, you can charm them into it."

* * *

The grandeur of Mayfair might as well be another dimension. The idea of living in Berkeley Square, actually living there and seeing grass and space and all that out your bedroom windows instead of concrete and abandoned syringes is just fucking nuts, and nobody else gives a shit? What the fuck. Roxy's playing Temple Run, Merlin's scribbling something with a stylus on his tablet, Lucan's asleep because he's still on China time, they're not even looking but Eggsy's there gazing out like they're on one of those open top tour buses instead of crammed into a cab going to work, forehead pressed against the glass trying to see movement in the lit windows of the upper floors.

"Looking forward to retirement," he says, misting up the window with his breath, and Merlin replies without bothering to turn round or even stop whatever the fuck he's doodling at.

"This needs to be earned. You'll end up in a one star nursing home in Mile End if you don't start doing your paperwork on time."

"Alright, keep your hair on. Oh, wait..."

That gets him a baleful sideways look from the front seat and Eggsy grins, victorious, as the cab pulls up in front of one of the houses, where 'The Kingsman Club' is engraved neatly on a stone plaque. No logo, no anything, just another private club for rich old snobs. Of course that's what he thought of the tailor shop too and that turned out alright, but the idea of walking in there and facing down a gang of retired old elitists who knew and worked with and probably kissed the arse of Chester King is a bit grim.

He quite likes being wrong sometimes.

He expected a butler or something, a maid, a nurse, some kind of servant because that just seems to make sense for a house full of rich old posh people who learned their ways decades ago, but the man who answers the door is wearing a cable knitted jumper and a pair of tartan pyjama trousers, reading glasses dangling on a chain around his neck. He peers at Eggsy and Roxy for a moment in polite confusion, then spots Merlin standing behind them and suddenly it's like he's smiling with his entire face, laughter lines and crow's feet creasing and crumpling in a way that reminds Eggsy of the way Harry looks when a rare laugh takes him by surprise.

"Merlin, lad, you should've phoned."

"Robert." Eggsy steps to the side, letting Merlin past to accept the warm handshake offered by the old man. "Thought it's time you all met our new Lancelot and Galahad. Roxy Morton, Eggsy Unwin, this is Robert McKay, formerly Gawain. I was his proposal for Bedivere before I transferred to tech."

"Back in the stone age, wasn't it? Lancelot, how do you do, Galahad – Lucan, dear boy, stop yawning, come in and have some coffee." Then the hand that was up til now hidden behind the door comes into view and he clicks the safety back on his gun. "Can't be too careful," he says to Roxy and Eggsy with a rueful sort of smile. "Everyone's on edge since – well, I daresay you two know better than anybody what I mean. Terrific work. Welcome aboard."

"Ain't that classified?" Eggsy mutters, falling back to speak to Merlin as Robert leads them into the house, and Merlin looks a bit pained.

"Of course, but if you ever figure out a lockdown system these people can't hack then please for the love of god let me know."

"Biometrics," Eggsy says grimly, and Merlin's mouth curls up into a reluctant smile beside him. "I'm busting for a wee, where's the loo?"

He follows Merlin's directions up the stairs, carpeted in plush burgundy wool. The house looks sort of like the Savile Row shop, the same deep colours and the burnished glow of old leather furniture and wood panelling, but comfortably lived-in with photographs on the wall, fresh flowers in vases that look priceless on tables that look antique, here and there signs of life in an abandoned newspaper folded open on a half-finished wordsearch and a cardigan draped carelessly over the first floor gallery guard rail. The bathroom is fucking massive, it's almost the size of the old flat he grew up in and he feels weirdly awkward about pissing in it, like going to the toilet in the school assembly hall or something if the school hall were built of gleaming white marble and mother of pearl tap handles. He stares at himself in the mirror when he's done, giving himself a few moments just to breathe. Trying to explain his discomfort in posh places to the others is useless, even Roxy can't quite get it – _you deserve to be here as much as anybody_ she's told him fiercely on the few occasions he's confided in her before, _and I'll fucking fight whoever makes you feel otherwise_ – because it's less about not feeling like he belongs and more just a niggling awkwardness any time he's reminded there are people in the world wiping their arses on toilet paper that probably costs a tenner a roll while all his mates off the estate who aren't already stealing literally count pennies and try to decide between buying bread and buying milk. It's like an ugly cousin of survivor guilt. All the suits and shit are nice, getting his mum and sister away from Dean and into a house with a fridge that doesn't chug and whir like a revving motorbike and a bathroom where the ceiling's not spongey and black with damp is ace, he's making the most of every bit of this new luxury, but the weird sense of unease settles on him sometimes like an unwanted grip on his shoulder: his face staring stupidly back at itself above a silk tie and below pomaded hair, behind high-tech glasses that cost thousands of pounds, washing his manicured hands in rose petal soap in front of a mirror framed in gold in a bathroom made of marble. "Galahad," he murmurs, and breathes out slowly until his face looks normal instead of worried. He's not Eggsy, not here.

And he says it again, calm and quiet in his nice trained accent when someone out in the corridor touches a gun to the side of his head and asks him who he is.

"Galahad. I'm not armed." He lifts his empty hands so she can see. "I mean, obviously I'm a walking arsenal—" Probably best to go with full honesty when there's a gun aimed at your brain "—but I'm not holding anything."

"Turn around, please." He turns slowly, arms still up, and meets the eyes of an old lady: cropped blonde hair, blouse and tweed waistcoat, Kingsman pistol held steady as a statue two feet from his face. She lowers it immediately and takes a step back, narrowed eyes widening slightly. "Good god, you look just like him."

His heart's still thumping hard, but he can't help the broad smile that invades his face any time he meets someone who knew his dad. "My father?"

She's perturbed by that, cocking her head and staring at him. "He kept that one quiet. Oh, do put your hands down, I thought you were an intruder. Has he woken up?"

"Who?"

"Your father."

"What the fu—" _No, Eggsy_ echoes in his head, the amused but firm voice of his conscience like a Cambridge-educated Jiminy Cricket. "My dad died in 1997, ma'am. I think our wires are crossed. Do you mean Harry?"

"He's not your father?"

He is so fucking glad Roxy isn't here to listen to this because Jesus he can almost hear her cackling in his head as it is. "My mentor."

"Well thank fuck for that," she says, "one Harry Hart is _quite_ enough," and drops him a sideways smirk as she's tapping the wall in some kind of morse code type pattern to open a panel there and put her gun away. "Did he dress you?"

"Yeah." He says it without thinking, too wrong-footed by the question to figure out a better way to word it and then fumbling, backtracking. "I mean not _literally_. He chose the fabric and design."

"Mm. That was his favourite tie, I remember it well." She holds out her hand suddenly and Eggsy clasps it to shake. "Judith Lawrence. Formerly Arthur, formerly Lancelot."

"Gary Unwin. Harry's doing well, he's still in an induced coma but the doctors are hopeful."

"Aren't we all." It's not really a question so he doesn't answer, just stands aside when she passes him and follows her back down the wide staircase. "To what do we owe the pleasure?"

"I'm here with Merlin, and Lancelot and Lucan." That's not really an answer and of course she knows that, twisting back to give him an amused arched-eyebrow look but not pressing any further as she leads him across the hallway and into a surprisingly small and cosy living room, all crackling coal fire, walls of books, intricately worked Persian rug underfoot, and, when the door creaks slightly on its hinges, ten pairs of eyes that flick instantly to his face. He gets the fleeting urge to put up his hands in surrender again.

Roxy, fashion model flawless in her grey three piece, is sitting on a low ottoman between two old guys in armchairs, one of whom must have been halfway through some hilarious story from the brightness of her eyes and the way she's holding her hand on her stomach. Merlin's pouring tea – of course, because Merlin's fucking always on the tea like some kind of junkie, like a chain smoker who can't go fifteen minutes without a hit – for a gorgeous lady with salt and pepper hair in a low bun and the posture of a ballet dancer even though she must be seventy whatever. Robert's by one of the bookcases, volumes all pulled out at angles like he's looking for something and the old fella beside him, massive smile and piercing blue eyes, is holding a teetering stack of hardbacks that Robert's adding to. Closest to the fire the oldest lady in the room is perched in a wheelchair, paper-thin skin in soft creases and pure white hair falling in a thick plait over her shoulder to her waist, with Lucan sitting by the hearth at her feet like a lapdog somehow looking terrified for his life and completely reverent at the same time.

The last old lady, eighty-something with cheekbones like a Cubist sculpture, strides right over and pumps his hand briskly. He's expecting one of those hilarious old BBC radio accents like in The King's Speech but actually when she talks it's the soft lilt of valley Welsh and it's so at odds with her military demeanour that he can't help smiling, not his fake polite nicely-trained society smile but a real one, wide and genuine. "You must be our Galahad. Merlin was about to send a search party."

"Yes, I'm afraid Galahad just met my pistol," Judith says apologetically as she follows him into the room, then wrinkles her nose and swears under her breath when half the other old folk start snorting and giggling. "Really? Not like that."

"Every other part of Harry's broken, you might as well break his heart too," Merlin says from behind his ridiculous little tea trolley, deadpan until Judith goes over to take his face in both of her hands and kiss his cheek hello and then he cracks a tiny smile. "Good evening, Arthur."

"Dear Merlin. Milk no sugar, please. You know you don't have to call me Arthur any more."

"Mm," Merlin hums vaguely as he's stirring in the milk, "about that..."

"Galahad," Roxy calls from across the room, and he takes the seat beside her when the handsome old guy with the cravat and moustache gestures for him to sit, carefully unbuttoning his jacket and remembering not to slouch. "This is Basil Courtney and Vincent Raleigh, Lionel and Galahad. Vincent was Harry's predecessor. Gentlemen, this is Galahad."

"For now," Eggsy says as he's shaking hands. "Harry's bound to be back on his feet before long."

"Let's hope so," Basil says – and he does have the accent, the crisp radio voice that's so on point it almost sounds like a parody. It's weirdly delightful, like a relic from a lost age. "I doubt he'd enjoy our pace of life if he ended up here."

"Poppycock," Cubist sculpture says as she comes over to join them. Eggsy jumps back up and offers her his chair, but she waves him back into it with an impatient flap of her hand. "I'm eighty-four, young man, I'm not dead, I'm perfectly able to stand. Harry would love it here. As I recall, he was an idle little horror as a recruit, kept missing breakfast because he slept too late with that damn dog of his curled up in his arms like a teddy bear. Then when he became an agent he got praised to heaven and back any time he made a morning meeting on time simply because Arthur was so used to him being late."

"You do know he did that on purpose for attention?" says Ballerina, coming over to their side of the room; she does take the chair when Eggsy offers it, smiling up at him when Roxy introduces her as Audrey Luke, Tristan, and the lady still standing as Katharine Lord, Lucan. "Carried a torch for her that was probably visible from Pluto."

"He still does, no doubt," Katharine says, frowning and glaring across the room at Judith and Merlin like it's their fault. "If he moves in here I'm leaving. I couldn't bear to look at that gormless starry-eyed face again every time he gets within fifty feet of Judith."

Surreptitiously Roxy pinches Eggsy's elbow, and he makes a mental note to give her a good kick in the shins as soon as they're outside because yeah ok this is all vaguely heartbreaking, hearing about Harry's idiotic crush on his boss, but that's totally not the same thing as him and Harry, not at all, it's nothing like it. Right.

To change the subject he goes over to Robert and gets introduced to Paul Bannon, Percival's predecessor, and finally – when she clears her throat lightly as if she's warning them all not to forget their manners – to the lady in the wheelchair.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Ms Laurie," he says, trying to match up this beautiful old lady with the snow white hair and huge brown eyes to the ice cold killer Merlin and Kay were talking about earlier. "Merlin speaks very highly of you."

"Of course he does. Bloody terrified of me, the little ninny." Oh right, there she is. "No need, of course, he's quite brilliant. I always saved the brunt of my wrath for foolhardy agents who brought me back smoking heaps of hardware and vehicles and expected a four minute turnaround on repairs."

There, the slightest flicker of movement at the corner of her lips, a bright little gleam in her eyes. Eggsy swallows back a laugh at Lucan, who's gazing up at her warily as though half-expecting her to explode like a lighter grenade at any moment, and sinks down on the rug beside him with his legs crossed like a schoolboy, settling his face into his best hopeful, expectant expression until she relents and begins to spill old stories.

An hour later they're back in the cab, Paul and Audrey waving them off from the door, and Lucan lets his breath out in a huge long wavering sigh of relief, leaning forward to grab the whiskey and giving Roxy and Eggsy two glasses each so he can pour.

"Merlin, I'll take the most unappealing honeypots and boring surveillance in the world over another meeting with—" He says it the same hushed, fearful sort of way that people say 'Voldemort' in the Harry Potter films "— _Laurie_."

"Ohh my god, you're honestly scared of her?" Whiskey's an acquired taste, Harry told Eggsy the first time he tried a glass of the good stuff and nearly spat it all over the HQ lounge they were in, but it's one he seems to be acquiring faster than he expected and he leans in to look for a bottle label but there's only the decanter. "What's this? It's amazing, can I get some for home?"

"Of course, I'll take it out of your pay," Merlin says absently from the front passenger seat where he's poking his tablet with the stylus again. "Lucan's still in recovery from crashing Lillian's favourite Porsche into a post box in 1994. Be gentle with him."

Beside Eggsy, Lucan actually shudders as though the memory is dragging cold clammy fingers down the length of his spine. "Breaking both my legs was by far the best part of that experience," he mutters, rubbing his hand briskly up and down his forearm like he's trying to chase off goosebumps. "You're new. You'll learn. You know that wheelchair of hers is a death machine? Switchblades in the wheels, guns in the arm rests. It's poisonous, quite literally. It's like a carnivorous plant, it kills everyone who isn't Lillian Laurie. Some stupid programming intern wouldn't believe the stories and took it out for a ride one night while she was sleeping, and he's still missing. Ask anybody in the tech department. She can astral project or something, she haunts the place and she's not even dead yet. Everyone knows it. They go to the toilet in pairs at night because if they go on their own they hear wheels following them down the corridor and her eyes _glaring_ in the shadows in the mirror."

On Eggsy's other side Roxy makes a stifled noise and carries on staring out of the window into the night, the tip of her thumb bitten hard between her trembling lips she way she does when she's trying not to laugh, and Eggsy digs his elbow into her side until she treads hard on his foot in retaliation. "Oh yeah, very funny," he says, "like tartan paint, hey. Asking for a long weight. Trick the new guy. I ain't falling for it, bruv, she seemed nice."

"Just you wait," Lucan says ominously. "Don't say I didn't warn you."

"Huh," Merlin says from the front a moment after his tablet beeps.

The three in the back wait for more, then, when he doesn't say anything else, Roxy prompts, "Merlin?"

"Message from Judith. Arthur. I thought it'd take longer for her to discuss it with them but they've all said yes."

"Oh god," Lucan mumbles, sinking down in his seat. "Don't suppose there's any decade-long deep undercover missions going in Chile or, say, one of the moons of Saturn?"

"I'll see what I can do, sir."

* * *

Eggsy wanders down to the handlers' suite after landing, hauling the world's biggest box of Belgian chocolates for Enid who's been doing double duty dogsitting JB and keeping Eggsy alive with calm instructions in his earpiece. "Bribery," he tells her after she's yelled for someone to put the kettle on and come and share. "I reckon we're a good team, me and you. No fucking off to work with the old farts now just cos they know what they're doing, alright?" 

"First solo mission's always a bugger." She eats posh chocolates the same undignified way he always did at Christmas, chewing off the top half to slurp the liquor out the middle. "Oh my god, have one of those, it's kirsch. Percy's first solo he bloody broke his glasses, I had to run him through the whole thing just from satellite and CCTV. You did alright. Though I suppose it wasn't your first, really."

"First as Galahad."

"First of many, I hope." She grins up at him, twirling in her desk chair to rescue the chocolate box from the guy whose hand keeps sneaking around the cubicle partition. "Especially if this becomes a habit."

"Your job to make sure I get all the missions in Belgium, then."

"You're on. Cheers." Eggsy clinks his chocolate off hers like a toast and tosses it in his mouth – the cloying sweetness and tingling burn of amaretto – as he heads for the door, then Enid calls after him, "Oh, sorry, forgot to say Merlin's been after you, he says can you go to his office?"

"He still there? It's like two in the morning."

"I'm pretty sure he's trained himself to live on no sleep and Pro Plus. You in trouble?"

"I dunno, probably. Usually am about something or other." He waves goodbye, shutting the door behind himself on her snort of laughter, and jogs down the corridor to Merlin's office, JB scuttling after him hopefully like he's in denial about the chocolate vanishing.

The office is empty, cold cup of half-drunk tea on the desk and a ham sandwich with a single bite taken from the corner. Eggsy pokes at it with his fingertip, finding the bread roughened and stale. It's all a bit Mary Celeste.

"Where's he gone?" JB plants his arse on the floor, grinning up at Eggsy with an expectant look on his face. "No, that ain't your sandwich, you'll get fat. Where's Merlin? Find him. JB, find Merlin." Useless little mutt only manages to find the drawer where the dog biscuits are, grabbing one gently between his teeth when Eggsy relents and holds it out for him before running off across the room to try and bury it under the corner of the rug. "Knew I shoulda gone for the Alsatian, you little prick," Eggsy mutters, then feels bad and scoops him up, kissing his crumpled little face and giving him another biscuit before heading back out into the corridor and tapping the frame of his glasses. "Hey, Merlin? You wanted to see me?" There's no answer. "You fell off the world, bruv? You in the toilet?"

"Infirmary," Merlin's voice says suddenly, "Harry woke up this morning," and Eggsy turns and fucking _sprints_ like he's on fire.

"You can't bring that dog in here," one of the nurses tries to tell him as Eggsy zips past, but he calls back over his shoulder, "He's my guide dog, mate, it's the law," and the guy's too baffled to chase him down. He almost falls in the corridor, smart shoes skidding over the polished floorboards as he takes a corner far too fast, and flings himself into Harry's room.

_I see you still haven't learned to knock_ , Harry signs at him, and Eggsy can't stop laughing in a way that's sort of crying, snot bubbling and eyes burning, grinning like a maniac and trying to hide it in JB's warm fur.

"Well, this is all very dramatic," Merlin says from his chair at Harry's bedside, but he's doing a terrible job of not smiling himself and there's something easy and settled about his eyes and his posture that Eggsy's not seen since before Siberia. "I'm going to have a word with Dr Conteh. Don't wear him out, Galahad. Don't get dog spit germs on him. Harry, I know you and dogs – hands off. Sir," he adds, like a sarcastic afterthought, and the half of Harry's face that's not completely swamped in bandages twitches like he'd be smiling if the swelling would let him. He gives a thumb up instead and Merlin nods, satisfied, and gestures Eggsy to take his seat when he gets up.

"Cheers, guv." He's not even looking at Merlin, he can't take his eyes off Harry, bruised and scabbed and surely drugged up to the gills on painkillers but alive, miraculously alive and awake and talking and _alive_.

Merlin pauses by the door and Eggsy finally glances up at him, sensing he's still there. "You realise that dog was the booby prize?" Merlin says, deadpan except for the amused glint in his eyes. "You weren't supposed to go straight for it, that was the dregs for the slowest off the mark."

"Don't you listen to him, JB," he gasps, fake-scandalised, cupping his hands over the pug's little ears, "don't listen to the mean old man, you're perfect," and Merlin actually laughs at that as he's swinging the door shut behind himself. A chain reaction of fucking miracles today. As soon as he's gone, Harry slowly holds out his hand for JB to sniff and gets a happy little lick of recognition. "Oi. Dog germs. Merlin's gonna have my nuts if you get sick."

_I won't get sick._

"Making me nervous signing with that IV thing in. Be careful, alright?"

OK sign.

Eggsy leans over to put JB on the floor but then he's got nothing to do with his hands and feels awkward as hell about it, so he goes to the sink and scrubs them with hot water and harsh-smelling soap to buy himself a few minutes to calm the fuck down, although he can feel Harry's uncovered eye on him the whole time which kind of makes the whole thing pointless. Except not really, because when he goes to sit down again Harry signs _clean_ and fucking _holds his hand_.

It's only for a moment, a quick squeeze of who knows what, greeting or whatever, but it's long enough to make his heart feel like it's flipping somersaults behind his ribs, and for once it's not because that's just the way his heart tends to behave around Harry. It's bigger than that, a rush of thunderous joy, and it bursts from him in words just as Harry releases him to sign again.

"I'm so fucking happy you're alright you got no idea."

_You stole my name._

"Merlin stole your name cos we thought you were dead! You can have it back."

_I won't be working for a long time yet. Look after it for me._

"Alright. Yeah, I will. I mean. I'll try to. Harry—"

_Merlin told me about V-Day._

"Yeah. It was..." What? They've talked this thing to death in the time since it happened and he still can't find the right words. "It should've been you there. I just fucking fluked the whole thing. Merlin was brilliant. Lancelot was too, she flew like sixty miles into _space_ , pretty much, and she's shit scared of heights. I was just like... I dunno."

_Autopilot._

"Yeah."

_That's good training. Symbiosis with your handler. I heard you made quite a team._

"Did Merlin say that?" he asks, a bit surprised and excessively pleased.

_He's very fond of you. Thinks you're a little shit, but very fond._

"Oh. Well, mutual, innit."

_Don't tell him I told you._

"You know I won't." He can't stop staring at Harry's face, what he can see of it and what's hidden under lumpy gauze wrappings. His injuries were barely visible at all the last time he lay in a coma in this same room for three months; now he looks like something from a film or those horrifying 999 documentaries, barely recognisable. "What's with the signing, anyway?"

_Broken maxilla, ruined teeth, shattered cheekbone._

"Fucking hell."

_Rather this than where he aimed. His hand was shaking horribly. It's mostly cosmetic, the real damage came when I hit my head falling down._

"I got him for you. He died covered in his own piss and puke."

Thumb up.

"I stabbed him with a leg."

_Please email me the video file._

"Yeah, alright."

_Leave out the dalliance with the princess._

"What the fuck, did Merlin tell you that too?"

_You're not that vile sex pest James Bond, you're a Kingsman. Control yourself._

"First time saving the world, bruv, don't tell me you never done the same."

_Not with a princess._

And that's a story he's fucking dying to hear – or see, whatever – but Dr Conteh and Merlin come back into the room then with their matching clipboards and he's ordered to either go and get some sleep or hold still for a knockout dart, so...

"Next time," he says, jabbing his pointer finger in Harry's direction as he walks backwards to the door with JB risking his life running in circles around his feet. "I'll see you later, yeah?"

OK sign, and a tidy little wave like he's bloody royalty or something.

"Night, Harry. Welcome back."

* * *

Merlin wasn't kidding about only covering the most vital missions. Eggsy's chucked right in at the deep end, flailing and half-blind; in his first three months alone he stops a terrorist attack on NATO with Katharine, helps Gawain and Percival take down a group of absolute fucking bastards planning to drag a ton of V-Day orphans into their slavery ring, starts and wins the world's second-best-ever bar brawl, foils a weirdly pathetic assassination attempt on the Queen by some distant relative of hers who wasn't too happy she'd been rescued safe and well from Valentine's bunker, and, with Kay and Audrey, stops a gang of chancers from nicking a whole warehouse full of those fucked-up SIM cards. He barely gets to see Harry or Roxy or his mum or anyone, he's either working or sleeping like a corpse, so when he finally gets a bit of a breather it's been long enough that Harry's been allowed out of bed, although not yet out of HQ. 

"Hey Harry."

Harry looks up from his crossword and Eggsy, loitering in the doorway of the library, gives him two thumbs up and a questioning look, then asks the question anyway.

"You alright? Arthur said you was up, just wanted to check in before I go home and crash."

" _Up_ is debatable. I'm out of that godforsaken hospital bed at least."

"Well, it's a start, innit? And quicker than we thought, so yeah. You look good."

It's a lie; Harry looks fucking awful, muscles wasted from disuse, face still drooping, the vivid red and white of shaved scalp around the jagged topography of the gunshot and various surgery scars twisting from his cheek to up above his temple, but then Eggsy doesn't look much better himself so who cares? His reflection in the loo mirror on the way up here was a disaster: his eye's turned an ugly purple, swollen half shut, the opposite cheek is scuffed with tiny red scabs in a graze that looks horrible and feels worse, two of his fingers are splinted together, and when he pushes himself off from his slouch against the doorframe and goes into the room he knows Harry can see how carefully he's carrying himself. A broken rib, he guesses, or at least some nasty bruising. The bulletproof suits can stop the missiles, but not the result of close-range impacts.

"Thank you, Eggsy. You look fresh and well-rested yourself."

"Shut up, I look like a fucking pincushion. Stabbed here—" He gestures vaguely at an area around his side, and then his aching thigh "—and here, feel like fucking shit. The tailors do know the seams are weak spots, yeah?" But the half-smile he gives Harry then is genuine, proud, lifting the corner of his split mouth. "Mission accomplished though."

"Let me get you a chair," Harry starts when Eggsy goes to sit on the rug at his feet, but Eggsy flaps him into silence with his bandaged hand and moments later JB comes flying through the door, running with much more speed than his ridiculous little legs should allow.

"Yeah, nice one, good boy! Who's a clever little wannabe bulldog, hey?" Eggsy finds a crumbling treat in the pocket of his suit jacket and hold it out to the grinning dog, who takes it neatly between his protruding teeth and turns around in a circle a few times until he's satisfied he's chosen a good spot to lie down and feast. "Teaching him to play hide and seek. I tell him stay, he waits five minutes then comes after me like a little fucking furry genius."

"You ruin that animal. And all your extremely expensive tailoring, apparently. Carrying those revolting things loose in your pockets and sitting on the floor like a schoolboy, really."

"I got shot to fuck like two hours ago, if the threads can take that I reckon they'll take a bit of unhoovered carpets."

"You should be resting."

"Yeah. Knackered but too wired, I ain't come down yet. Feel like I could run a marathon if I weren't just stabbed in the fucking leg. Is it always like this?"

"Depends on the mission, I always found. Sometimes you'll just want to sleep for days. Two down, something something P something Y, friend of Bungle."

"That's Zippy, innit? You shoulda seen Audrey, holy fuck! Just BAM out of nowhere shot this prick with a dart right in the eye, I was like well you was almost on target thinking she was aiming for his neck and she just went Galahad the last time I misfired was nineteen sixty five and that was cos I had a broken gun. Fucking brutal. I mean serves him right for slagging her off but still, fuck sake, his _eye_. Don't ever call that woman wrinkles. Fair warning."

"Appalling. Deserved everything he got and more, I'm sure. What on earth is a Zippy?"

Eggsy falls asleep right there on the floor, JB licking treat remnants off his fingers and Harry frowning in slightly horrified disbelief at the Rainbow videos Eggsy found for him on Youtube. When he awakes he's not been out nearly long enough to take the edge off his exhaustion, but even so the joint of his hip screams at him when he moves from his weird twisted position and flops down opposite Harry in the chair he refused earlier.

"You snore," Harry says, eyes back on his crossword. "C something something something L something N something, mechanic married to Scott? Oh, Charlene," he mumbles, inking in the letters.

"What fucking theme is that crossword, shit from the eighties?"

"Television from the eighties."

"Yeah, what I said. Thought you'd be doing some cryptic headache from one of the toff papers."

"We all have our vices," Harry says, a bit snidely. Eggsy's trying to figure out a way to say _yeah but normal people smoke or listen to McFly or eat a box of fondant fancies in a single sitting_ but he's too distracted by JB's crumpled beautiful little angelic furry face turned up beseechingly to Harry. He laughs a bit behind his hand, knocked helpless by a sudden wave of love for the little guy and then an aftershock of resigned embarrassment when he accidentally wonders if that's what his own face looks like around his – what? Mentor? Friend now. You shouldn't gaze at your friends like that, it's weird, but he knows he does it, he can feel it every time. It's just one of those things, as inevitable as breathing.

"Oi. Think JB wants a cuddle."

"Does he?" Harry closes his pen inside his puzzle book and puts it on the table beside his chair, reaching down to wriggle his fingers at JB. The little idiot is so excited he's not just shaking his tail, he's shaking his whole arse, stamping side to side and dancing round in a circle a few times before he charges forward and butts his head against Harry's hand. "I'm sorry, how rude of me. Come on, then, up you get. There's a good boy," he croons, settling JB in his lap and scratching the spot he likes on the back of his neck. "Spoiled little thing, aren't you? Less than you deserve, such a handsome fellow." Now JB's practically vibrating with glee, standing up with his front paws digging into the front of Harry's cardigan and a dopey grin on his face, one that's mirrored on Harry's, and Eggsy's hands decide to take a photo and Snapchat it to Roxy captioned _S.O.S ROX IM IN LOVE MAYDAY HELP_ without the permission of his brain.

It's not a new revelation, really. It's just becoming more difficult to ignore. There's something soft and fond in Harry's eyes as he watches JB's face and it's just fucking unbearable, Eggsy feels giddy from it.

"If you're just gonna sit here sniffing each other's arses I'm going home."

 _Bit busy Eggs!_ Roxy replies, flashing a thumbs up from a helicopter passenger seat, ballooning orange explosion visible in the window beside her.

Harry's got both huge hands cupped around JB's tiny pea head, rubbing a double line of fingertip scratches behind his ears. "Feeling left out, are we?"

_Look Harry's just pretty much suggested a 3some me him n JB so enjoy ur explosions n I'll enjoy mine x_

"Nah. Impressed he's made you his slave so quick."

_God fuck off Eggsy don't make me laugh with a broken rib x_

"I always did have a soft spot for bulldogs," Harry says, looking carefully innocent for a mere few seconds before he ruins it with a tiny smirk and Eggsy starts laughing, he can't help it, even though it fucking kills his injured side.

_Broken rib twins :( Look after urself bruv see you later x_

Knackered and aching, down a pint or two of blood, slouching in a library at two in the morning opposite a man who looks like he's been Frankensteined together, who's snuggling a tiny dog and looking jubilant about figuring out four down (Balowski), Eggsy's never felt more at home.

* * *

The only bad thing about Harry's recovery picking up its pace is his sudden complete inability to _stay put_. He takes to wandering round HQ at all hours of the day and night sticking his nose into everyone else's business because he's bored, and nobody can really tell him no since – to a torrent of extreme teasing, not least of all from Arthur herself who's completely aware that he still goes a bit unnecessary in her presence – he's given the codename Guinevere and put to task on various organisational and admin and leadership work that doesn't involve any throwing himself about and opening up his stitches. Sometimes Eggsy thinks he's doing it on purpose, the same way JB seems to be able to turn into a ghost at will and silently hide for hours on end at the first mention of awful words like "vet" and "toenail trim". The two of them have formed a sort of alliance, like it's JB and Harry against the world now, and if they want to go off for a wander and not be found there's nothing and nobody that can get hold of them until they feel like company again. It's a bit fucked up really, but also it's really fucking cute so whatever. 

Tonight Eggsy's back from an assassination in Milan, the easiest and most stress-free job he's had in ages, although, with a sort of backward logic, it's left him feeling absolutely dead on his feet, exhausted and grouchy like all the previous months of flying by on adrenaline have finally caught up with him and punched him in the face. Harry's not in his suite, or his office, or the library or drawing room or any of his usual haunts, he's not answering his phone, his glasses are turned off, and when Eggsy stands in the middle of the house and calls JB there's no distant tap of tiny feet on the floorboards. He stomps down towards the handlers and tech department to see if anyone'll take pity and trace them through their trackers for him, but...

The lights in the corridor are dim, and he can hear the quiet sound of wheels. He remembers Lucan's shitty ghost story from back in the cab that time and wants to laugh, but there's something really fucking eerie about this place at night when there's hardly anyone around, all deserted and lights flickering like something from a zombie film or horror game, and the sound is like she should be _right there_ in front of him if it really was Lillian scooting about but she's not. He draws his gun silently, then considers putting it back because what the fuck are bullets going to do against a ghost, but keeps it there in his hand because the familiar heavy weight of it makes him feel better somehow, more in control even though he's not. JB and Harry almost forgotten, he steps lightly down the corridor straining to place the gentle noise of movement, then with a lurching jolt to his stomach realises it's behind him and spins, jacket flying out like a girl in a twirling skirt, raising his pistol and yelling, " _Freeze_!"

Lillian looks up at him irritably. "Stand down, Galahad."

"Oh my god I'm so sorry." Fucking Lucan's getting a punch in the dick when he gets back from wherever the fuck he's vanished to on his six month mission. "This place gives me the creeps."

She eyes him for a moment longer, then seems to soften slightly. "Yes. Funny acoustics in this part of the building, I've always found. Don't let the fools trick you with ghost stories, it's simply a matter of angles and materials causing an illusion. It's science. Most things are."

"Well. Yeah, alright, I suppose that makes sense." Fucking Lucan. "You're here late."

"I'll be dead soon enough. I refuse to waste time in bed when there's work to do." He blinks at that, stumped for a response, and she stares back mildly with a smile hovering somewhere in the depths of her massive brown eyes, still sharp and shrewd at ninety-nine. "Can I help you with anything or shall we say goodnight?"

"Yeah, no, I was just looking for my pup. Or Guinevere, cos they're usually together. Have you seen them?"

"Not since dinner, but–" She gestures over her shoulder in the direction of the tech department "–you might find them on the cameras. Goodnight, Galahad."

"Night," he echoes, standing back to let her past.

There's always people down here twenty-four hours a day, like there is everywhere else. Worldwide missions spanning every possible time zone kind of make the concept of reasonable work hours meaningless, even more so in the departments located underground where it's easy to forget altogether that there's a thing called a 'sun' which rises and sets every day. Eggsy hears the whirr of computers and the excited buzz of voices, people working at screens and talking on phones and snoozing over their desks with earplugs in.

"Anyone seen Guinevere?" he says to the room at large. There's a few shaken heads in response, a few mutters of "sorry, no", and – hmm. Suspicious – suddenly a bit of a commotion in one corner of the room where there's a cluster of people with guilty expressions standing around a huge monitor. _Turn it off_ someone hisses. Someone's hand is scrambling on a mouse. "Erm," he says, and raises his eyebrows at them the way he's learned from Harry, unimpressed and demanding. He finds his voice slipping from its usual accent, which he refuses to stop using around HQ because fuck anybody who doesn't like it, into something sharper and harder, his clipped estuary-almost-RP let-me-speak-to-your-manager voice that he's found gets some pretty swift results out in the real world even though using it kind of makes him feel like a dickhead. "If you know where he is I'd like you to tell me, please."

"He's not been down here, sir," one of the guys says, wide-eyed and innocent. Suspicious as fuck. He's trying to hide the monitor behind his body but it's a thirty-six inch screen and he's about as wide around as Eggsy's bicep so it's not really working.

"Why are you all acting like you've murdered him and stashed his body in pieces in your pockets?

They all look at each other uneasily like children caught stealing from the biscuit jar.

"What are you doing? Show me, please." He's pretty sure he's not even allowed to pull rank down here but he's going for it anyway. Absolute dickhead, he thinks, but whatever, he's tired and annoyed and feels like a fight – _but not this fight_ , his horrified brain says a moment later when the nervous guy presses play on the video they're watching, _not THIS fight_. Eggsy steps closer despite himself, feeling the same creeping dread drawing goosebumps and clammy sweat from his skin that he felt all those months ago in Harry's study when he watched all this go down in real time. The pews fall like dominos, Harry launches himself through the air, shoots a guy point blank in the head, dodges a smack in the face and shoots his new assailant too, rolls and stands and blasts a bullet into someone's guts. It's not the same view Eggsy saw before, through Harry's glasses; it's worse. He can see _everything_ , the frenetic speed of his movements and every single entry and exit wound, all the stuff Harry didn't linger to look at back when it was happening. There's blood soaking into the floorboards.

"What the actual fuck."

On screen Harry snaps a staff in half and uses it to stab a guy between the collarbones.

The others seem to have unanimously and silently voted the skinny bloke as their spokesman because he's giving them a despairing sort of look as a few of them scurry away and then glancing vaguely at Eggsy's face without quite meeting his eyes. "We're working with the church security camera footage and the confiscated SIM cards and implants to–"

"No. Stop." On screen, Harry bashes a couple of heads in with an incense burner. Stops a knife attack with a bible and stabs a woman in the spine, a man in the eye, another man in the crown. "Are you fucking kidding me, do you all even work in this office? This ain't some hilarious cat video on Youtube for fuck's sake, this ain't some cool thing you call all your mates in to come and have a look at." Harry sets a man's head on fire and breaks some necks and goes all Vlad the Impaler on a group of people and grenades the fuck out of some others fighting by the altar, and Eggsy leans over the shoulder of the woman sitting in front of the monitor and smashes escape on her keyboard so the video player vanishes. "He's _always_ in control, that's his thing, you shouldn't all be crowding round watching him lose it like it's something impressive, how fucking disrespectful can you get?" He's aware even as he's saying it that he's being a bit of a hypocrite, considering how often he ignored Pornhub and instead ran that first pub fight through his head for weeks after it happened, and that just makes him even angrier somehow, full on fucking spitting furious. He turns to flounce out and get some air and probably find a wall to punch or something – and there's Harry leaning on his stick in the doorway, JB cradled like a baby in his other arm and a tiny resigned little smile on his face like he's saying _well, thank you for trying_.

"Lillian said you were looking for me."

"How come she found you in like forty seconds when I been running all over looking for you for half an hour?"

"I've learned not to question her methods."

"Questioning the methods of her fucking staff right now," Eggsy mutters, ignoring the urge to throw a warning glare over his shoulder as he's following Harry back out the door. "You shoulda heard them pricks when I came in. All crowding round going oooh like it's a fucking fireworks display. Coulda smashed all their heads together, Jesus."

"I've been assured they're finding the footage very helpful." He says _helpful_ in a lip-curled sneering sort of way, like he doesn't believe it for a second.

"What, when they're wanking?"

Harry snorts a little laugh at that, stooping carefully to stand JB on the floor when he starts struggling to be let down. "Whatever floats your boat, as they say."

"Fucking sickos." He's still so angry he's thrumming with it, fists and teeth clenched hard. That day and everything that happened before the final showdown with Valentine stays neatly locked somewhere deep in his mind, only occasionally sneaking out in the form of a nightmare, so any time it's brought up unexpectedly he feels that same sickening, shocking sense of unease as when it wakes him flailing and sweating from sleep. It's not just the shit that went down in the church and after it, the horrible stretch of hours when they thought Harry was dead: there's also the argument they had in Harry's downstairs toilet before he left, and the way they've been dancing around resolving it ever since he woke back up. He usually ignores it because it seems easier. Now he's in a shitty mood already, it's just added fuel. "How come you're always carrying my dog around like a fucking handbag?"

Harry gives him a funny look. "We went to observe the recruits' night training and his feet were muddy. They're dry now. Would you like me not to carry him?"

"No, just do what you fucking want, you always do anyway."

"Eggsy, _stop_ ," Harry says when Eggsy strides off ahead of him, in that not-taking-any-shit tone. Eggsy considers ignoring it just to see what happens, still busting for a fight that the tech idiots were too sheepishly pathetic to give him, but instead he comes to a halt at the lift and slams the button, holding the doors until Harry and JB catch up. "What the hell is the matter? Rough mission?"

"No. Straight in and out, easiest one yet."

"If you're still cross about them watching that video–"

"You were so fucking pissed at me for not shooting him," he snaps, and Harry quietly says, "Oh. Right."

All the way up six levels they don't speak, and JB sits there in front of the doors staring up at them with a grin on his face, oblivious to the tension suddenly hanging heavy in the air between them.

"I was going to give him a bath," Harry says, after the doors ping open but neither of them makes a move to leave the lift. "Didn't expect you back so soon. Would you rather just take him home?"

There's something cautious and apologetic in his voice and Eggsy's craving for a fight floods out of him, leaving him exhausted and feeling weirdly on the verge of crying like a toddler. "What, and get bollocked again for leaving mud and shit all over the train? I don't think so. You can clean him and I'm gonna drink all your booze."

He lets himself into Harry's room, fingerprint and retina still working on the lock from those strange few weeks post-coma when he spent every spare moment between missions sitting by Harry's bed talking and reading and listening to him whinge, strips off his jacket and heads straight for the drinks cabinet while Harry goes through to run water into the bathtub.

"Oi, where's the good stuff?" he calls.

Harry appears in the ensuite doorway, rolling up his sleeves. "The Dalmore?"

"That's _too_ good. The Macallan."

"I believe Merlin had the last of it."

"Bastard!" He pours a couple of glasses of Harry's favourite instead and takes them in, standing them on top of the toilet cistern before sinking to his knees beside Harry and rolling up his own sleeves. JB's already in the tub, rolling over and kicking his little feet under the stream of water from the tap, and he makes a chirping noise of happiness when Eggsy and Harry both reach out at the same time to scratch wet fingertips across his belly fur. "Have a go at me spoiling him, _you_ spoil him!"

Harry doesn't reply to that, just sort of smiles as he's rubbing little circles into JB's fur, up his sides and around the back of his ears. After a minute he says, "I was angry at the situation, not at you," and Eggsy thinks _oh shit, this is happening now_.

"Alright," he says awkwardly. "JB, gimme your foot, stop wriggling."

"I mean," Harry continues after a moment, "absolutely fucking livid about the car, of course."

"Shit."

"And. Disappointed."

"Oh, fucking hell," Eggsy mutters. "That's worse than angry."

"In myself, I mean. That I hadn't convinced you to trust me enough to know I'd never expect you to kill your damn dog."

"Don't call him a _damn dog_ , he's right there! Rude."

Harry gives JB a scratch under the chin in apology. "We all hate that test, but it's valuable. There are different kinds of people. Some know it's a blank from perhaps the weight of the gun, maybe tells from the tester, or a hunch after the parachute and train tests turned out to be rigged."

"Roxy said she just trusted Merlin. She said if it turned out to be a real bullet she woulda fucking kicked his bollocks up so hard they blasted out the top of his head like Krakatoa."

"That's a fight I'd like to see." He's got that ridiculous moony look on his face again, gazing down at JB who's sitting in the water now grinning back up at Harry like he's God. "Some people, usually recruits from a military background, shoot without hesitation because they're trained to follow instructions. Some shoot but not to kill. Did you notice the wording of the instruction? Shoot the dog. Not kill the dog. I suspected the bullet wasn't real but I aimed at Mr Pickle's tail just in case. And some people refuse to shoot at all. Percival, for example, quoted verbatim the part from the handbook about only risking a life to save another, handed Merlin his gun, and waited to be dismissed. The sorts of missions one's suitable for depend upon a hundred different factors. Shooting the dog is never a final test because there's no wrong answer, it's merely a way to gauge people's personalities and how they react to difficult instructions. "

"Never until me, you mean," Eggsy says wryly, and Harry gives him an amused sideways look.

"Well, nobody's pointed the gun at their instructor before. That would be cause for dismissal whatever the circumstances, and I expect Chester had been looking for an excuse from day one. Pass me that towel, would you?"

Sitting on the closed toilet lid with his whiskey, Eggsy watches as Harry swaddles JB in the towel and pats him dry, murmuring sing-song words of praise and smiling like a dick when JB gets close enough to lick his cheek just at the point where his latest surgery scar starts. _If I ever get shot in the face again let's hope it's in the same spot_ , he said from his bed in the infirmary when he woke up from that one. _Half my skull is bulletproof now_.

"I'm sorry I called you a freak," Eggsy tells him, suddenly bursting with it and unable to find words huge enough for what he means, to cover all the myriad things he's sorry for. "I mean you're totally a freak, but sorry I _called_ you one."

He sort of expects Harry to laugh, that was the intention, but he just looks thoughtful instead and finally manages a lopsided sort of half-smile. "Come through. Could you bring my drink?" Eggsy follows him back into the bedroom and hands the glass to Harry when he sits on the edge of the mattress, and a sip and a sigh later Harry unwinds JB from his towel, puts him on the floor – where he starts frantically rubbing his damp fur all over the carpet and walls and furniture – and taps the bed beside him until Eggsy sits too, close enough to feel the warmth of Harry's arm through the fabric of their shirt sleeves although they're not touching. "You apologised before I left. I just left. It was inexcusable rudeness, not to mention utterly against the Kingsman credo. Never leave for a mission angry with someone you care about. It's unwritten rule number one. This wasn't the first time I've broken it and I'm sure it won't be the last, but it's the one I've regretted more than anything else for a very long time."

"Oh," Eggsy says softly, frowning, staring at his shoes, feeling like he's probably blushing like hell and trying desperately to style it out with a sunny grin and an elbow nudged into Harry's arm. "Alright, don't need to go all mushy on me."

Harry downs the rest of his drink, ice cubes clinking gently as he sets his glass down on the bedside table. "Anything heartfelt is always a little mushy, isn't it? Awful. I need another drink. There's more to say."

"Oh god." Eggsy falls backwards on the bed, hiding his eyes in the crook of his elbow, careful not to spill his whiskey. "I can't take it. No more. Can't we just like shake hands and move on? To be honest I was over it all the second we found out you weren't dead." Because if he has to put up with Harry looking at him like this any more, all soft and sincere around the eyes, halting over his words, he's going to have to fucking kiss him right on the mouth and then kill himself in embarrassment.

Then the mattress lurches, Harry falling back beside him, and holy fuck that really isn't helping any more than the earnest words. Eggsy's afraid to move his arm and open his eyes because Harry's are probably _right there_ staring at him. "Eggsy, what I said about your father."

"It's alright."

"It's not alright."

"No, it really is."

"I didn't mean what I said at all."

"Yeah, I know."

"This all started as a favour, or some pitiful attempt to repay him, but–"

"Harry, shut up."

"–every wonderful thing you are, that's all you."

"Oh my god. Are you drunk."

"Of course not. Just a little mortified at the way I spoke to you. And. Relieved that they didn't turn out to be our last words."

"Are we done?"

"What else do you want from this heart to heart, a bloody hug?"

Eggsy rolls away from him so quickly that he misjudges the distance and falls right off the bed, spilling the last half an inch of whiskey and melted ice on the rug. "Nope, I'm good. Nice chat. I'm gonna go home, alright?"

He legs it as fast as possible, trying to ignore the barely-hidden laughter in Harry's voice when he bids him goodnight, and spends the train ride back to London typing a series of increasingly desperate crisis texts to Roxy before he remembers she's in Alaska and he's underground. He throws his phone at the chair opposite, slouching down and groaning into the cup of his hands until JB headbutts his shin like he's telling him to man up.

"You don't understand," Eggsy tells him, "you've got no balls," but JB doesn't understand that either.

* * *

Roxy works better alone and takes as many solo missions as she can get, but Eggsy's favourites are the double jobs, or the rare times they have to go and take some particularly difficult fuckers down in a group of five or six. There's something extra thrilling about the teamwork, people slotting neatly around each other like the teeth of cogs, figuring out how to take the best of everyone's different methods and smash them together into something bigger and better like a Transformers combiner. Percival and Katharine are pinpoint-accurate snipers. Gawain is the bombs expert. Vincent speaks about fourteen languages and hadn't yet met a code he can't break. Basil uses charm like hypnosis, drawing secrets out of people so smoothly that they don't even realise they've had their brains hacked until it's too late. Kay's knowledge of poisons is fucking terrifying. Gareth has this knack of moving about the world as silent and unobtrusive as a ghost, managing to slip into unbreakable vaults and multi-locked rooms like he's made of smoke. Robert, like Harry before he got injured, excels in hand to hand combat, moving so neatly and swiftly it's almost a dance even in his early seventies. 

"So what about you?" Eggsy asks Audrey, sitting under a parasol on the beach on Monaco waiting for their mark to leave his hotel room. "Back in the day, what was your thing?"

"Assassinations, mostly."

"No shit!"

"No shit," she echoes, smiling faintly like she's trying not to look quite so proud. "I believe I held the record for the most successful terminations until the late Alymere passed me in the nineties."

"Tell him the full story," Katharine says from Eggsy's other side, sipping a cocktail and looking at Audrey over the top of her shades, "honeypot queen," and Audrey rolls her eyes.

"Please. Bannon saw twice as many beds as I did."

"Ugh, that man."

This waiting-around part is always fucking boring, Eggsy grabs at the chance to spice it up with some gossip. "What's the matter, don't you get on?"

"Paul always made me so _angry_." So angry that she necks the rest of her martini and starts on Eggsy's. "He was so vain. We were captured on a job once, and he spent the whole time begging them not to break his face. I almost broke the damn thing myself before we escaped, but it would've been like blowing up the Sistine Chapel. He was so handsome. So infuriatingly bloody _handsome_. I was livid with him for a full decade, he was such a distraction and always so bloody pleased with himself as though he had something clever to do with his own genetics to make his face look like that."

 _Yeah, I know how that feels_ , he wants to say but doesn't. "What happened then, did he suddenly get ugly or something?"

"Of course not, I married him so I could hate him up close."

"And you didn't mind him shagging secrets out of people?"

"God no, the more the better. Sometimes we didn't see each other for months at a time, it suited me beautifully."

"Sorry to interrupt," Enid says over their comms, sounding amused. "Sauveterre's on the move, I'm tracking him through the hotel security cameras. Looks like he's on his way out, so Galahad, you're up."

Easiest thing in the world to 'accidentally' bump into him as he's coming through the front door and snatch his phone. He's bound to realise it's missing within minutes, but that's long enough for Eggsy to stick a miniature transmitter into the charging port and suck out a copy of his contacts, then he gives the phone to the man at the reception desk and tells him some guy dropped it outside."Enid," he murmurs as he's heading back to the others, barely moving his lips, "you got that?"

"Yeah, got it. Encrypted, of course. Passing it to the guys now, I'll let you know when they're in and what's the next move."

"Alright. Laters."

It's probably a good idea to get off the front in case Sauveterre comes back looking for his phone, but when Eggsy gets back to their shaded table Katharine and Audrey are sitting closer together than before, speaking in low voices that don't carry to the table next to them, now occupied by a middle aged man with a pencil moustache and two old ladies with sour faces. Audrey glances up when he reaches them, smiling casually like there's nothing wrong.

"It's getting awfully warm, dear," she says. "Shall we go indoors?"

"Of course." He offers her his arm as she stands, then says to Katharine, "Aunty Jo, are you coming?"

"No, love, I'll soak up the sun a bit longer." Subtext: keep an eye on the newcomers.

"Who are they?" Eggsy murmurs out the side of his mouth as he's crossing the road with Audrey towards their hotel. "No way they're working for him, they're like a million and one."

"Younger than me," Audrey says, giving him an amused sideways look, and he winces.

"Shit, sorry. I take it you know them?"

"Just some aquaintances from a long time ago. Kate looks different enough these days but I'd rather not be recognised."

"They bad news?"

"Hopefully not any more."

It's all very mysterious and he wants to pry, but that's when Sauveterre's vulgar limo screeches to a stop by the side of the road and a tinted window opens just wide enough for him to see the barrel of a gun. Finally realised his phone was missing, then.

"Inside," he tells Audrey, blocking her with his body until she makes it to the hotel door then taking off at a run, bullets slamming painfully into the armoured linen of his suit until he flicks a lighter into the road and the car explodes, rocking up onto its back wheels like a rearing horse.

"A bit more drastic than what I was gonna suggest," Enid says, "but it'll do," and Eggsy tucks his pistol away and gives himself a thumbs up so she can see it through his glasses. "Now I have to set the '6 days without an agent unnecessarily blowing shit up' counter back to zero. We almost made a full week for the first time since 2009."

"Sorry," he says, although he's not.

* * *

The snow's finally stopped falling, but there's a grey heaviness to the clouds overhead and the air is sharply painful in his lungs when he steps outside, buttoning his pea coat over his scarf. 

( _Cashmere and silk_ , Harry told him the other day, as he slid the charcoal fabric from Eggsy's wondering fingers and wrapped it twice around his neck, _nothing like it in the world_ , and Eggsy said wryly _I wish I knew who my Secret Santa was so I could thank them, I got no idea, like seriously I ain't got a clue who's got me this but I bet they're feeling pretty pleased with themselves, whoever they are._ )

In the distance the recruits are doing some kind of obstacle course in the snow, poor buggers, sinking and skidding through the fresh fall as they race each other over climbing walls and under nets. He's glad he's in his civvies today, jeans tucked into green and black moon boots; the posh Kingsman shoes are good for poison stabbing someone to death but pretty shit for traction on anything more than rain. Although Basil and Vincent seem to be doing alright, he realises, and they're about a hundred and thirty years old, and Katharine is – he squints, thinking _surely not_ – actually wearing neat low heels and standing there beside them and Harry looking like the queen of the fucking world, ramrod straight and cheeks flushed with the cold, her breath pluming out white and mingling with the steam rising from the mug of tea she's holding between her gloved palms.

"Morning, all," he says when he's halfway down the curved stone staircase. "Bit nippy to be standing around, innit?"

"Nonsense," Katharine says briskly in place of a hello. "You should've seen 1962 and 3, now _that_ was a winter. Sea froze for a mile out from shore in Kent. Tristan lost four toes to frostbite going undercover at a New Year party and she still managed to take down a gang of weapon smugglers on her own while the rest of us were stranded in airports and trying to dig our way out of Hertfordshire."

"Well, I'm bloody freezing," Harry says, "I'm going to make a fresh pot. Galahad—" He points a menacing finger as he's passing by Eggsy at the base of the stairs "—paperwork or I'm sending Toeless Tristan to Venezuela instead of you."

"What do you think I'm here for on my day off?"

Behind Basil and Katharine, Eggsy sees Vincent stoop suddenly, keeping himself steady with a hand on his cane and pressing a finger to his lips to signal a secret before gathering up a palmful of snow and bowling it like a cricket ball, sniper-accurate. It's loosely packed and explodes like a dandelion clock on impact: neatly in the middle of Harry's arse, a scattered white circle clinging stark to the black of his overcoat.

"Oh, good shot, Galahad," Basil says approvingly, then adds, "erm, I mean appalling behaviour, you know better, mind your manners, and so on and so forth."

Harry turns then, eyebrows so high they've concertinaed his forehead into wrinkles, and stares at Eggsy.

"Bruv, no, that weren't me. Swear down, I never—"

He's seen Harry fight before so the speed he moves shouldn't be a surprise, but the snowball to the face fucking is. The shocking cold of it makes him gasp and he breathes in the powder, hacking and heaving as another four snowballs find their targets: his heart, his stomach, his fucking _crotch_ and that's just fighting dirty, then his face again just when he's got it together enough to try and protest his innocence. He stumbles back, pawing clogged snow from out behind his glasses – and this is war now, this is fucking _on_. He drops his glasses into his inside coat pocket for safety and turns his fighting face on Harry, who's not moved an inch from his place on the steps except to haul together another missile from the snow gathered on the wall beside him.

"You fucking kidding me, you shoot first ask questions later? It was the other Galahad!" He fires and Harry ducks behind the pillar just in time for the snowball to miss his head, pelting Eggsy with another two from around the side. It's infuriating, he's good at _everything_ , he's just fucking perfect and now Eggsy's losing a fight that shouldn't even have been picked with him in the first place and actually for a few moments he's genuinely livid at the unfairness of it all before he sees the way Vincent's laughing so hard that Katharine and Basil are having to help keep him upright and then it's ridiculous. He swipes more melting snow off his raw cheeks and turns on them instead, forcing words through helpless laughter, "I don't care you're all a hundred and fifty, you get what you give," attacking them a bit more gently than he went for Harry because hip replacements and heart conditions and all that, then saying fuck it and giving it everything when they scatter and come back at him like a pack of velociraptors.

"Alliance?" Harry calls to him when Eggsy flings himself behind the opposite pillar to regroup and catch his breath.

"Get fucked, this is all your fault!" He yelps when another snowball sails over and clips him on the shoulder, sliding into the top of his collar where his scarf's come loose. "I'm calling for backup."

"A little drastic for a snowball fight, don't you think?"

"Fuck off with your snowball fight, this is snowball _war_ and I ain't surrendering." He tries to find a dry place on his coat to wipe his freezing wet hand so he can Whatsapp Percival and Lucan: _Hey boys you busy? Come n save me n Guin from snowy doom back steps_. "Is it cheating if I stupefy them with my watch?"

"I rather think it is."

"Spose. Alright, fucking hell, alliance but you're the martyr. Cover me, I'm gonna get up there." He dashes out before Harry's got a chance to protest, squeaking through the untouched snow his side of the steps and hopping onto the wall beside the stone pot, sprinting just far enough up to fling himself through the air and grab hold of the top of the balcony barrier, using his own momentum to carry him over and behind one of the columns. He hears one of the guys say _bloody hell_ and flicks a V around the side of his shelter, laughing and whipping his hand back in just nanoseconds before a retaliatory snowball whistles past. It's a much better position up here, a better view although it's farther away from the enemy, and he manages to smack them all at least three or four times each before he gets complacent and sticks his head out too far and gets a face full of snow. "Harry," he splutters, trying to sneak a glance between the uprights of the balcony to see what he's up to, "you're meant to be covering me – oh you fucking traitor!" he yells when he spots Harry hefting a snowball in the palm of his hand while Katharine adds her own to it. "As if you'll ever get that fucking monster snowball up here, you – shit!" It just misses him and skids along the floor, scattering powder and coming to a halt by the door.

Then Lucan and Percival come charging out like last-minute miraculous reinforcements in fantasy films and it's three on four, a better balance that quickly turns pretty nasty, no holds barred, snowballs packed firmer and hitting harder until there's genuine pain behind the laughter. Eggsy gets a snowball to the jaw that's as hard as a golf ball and that is it, that's enough, Harry's gone too fucking far this time – Eggsy runs at him and impacts shoulder first, shoving out a startled little _oof_ noise then hooking a foot behind Harry's knee and collapsing him into a snowdrift. "Traitor," he says again, yanking at Harry's scarf to pack his collar full of snow, "I'm telling Arthur, fucking traitor!" but he's laughing as he's saying it, helplessly laughing because Harry is too and Eggsy can feel the vibrations of his chest shaking beneath him where he's

Shit.

Where he's straddling Harry's thighs, leaning hard down on his chest to keep him from getting up, with the fingers of one hand closed tightly around Harry's coat cuff and pressing his wrist into the snow above his head. His other hand, freezing wet and almost numb, falters and stops at Harry's throat.

"Shit," he says, hurriedly letting Harry's wrist go, "sorry, did I hurt you?"

But he remembers training with Harry through his months of recovery, watching him get his stamina and strength back up, then sparring with him when he was up to it and ending almost every session flat on his back with Harry pinning him down no matter how hard Eggsy fought. _Stop letting me win_ , Harry snarled once, red-faced and sweating with his forearm thrust hard against Eggsy's neck, _it's fucking patronising_ , and Eggsy raised his hands in surrender and told him _swear I ain't letting you do nothing, you're just that good_.

"No." Harry's eyes are bright, cheeks flushed pink with the exertion and the cold. Eggsy's never seen him laugh like this before, he hardly even thought it was possible. He's all dimples and teeth, eyelashes wet so they clump together around his eyes like stars, laughing in a low rumble in his throat, and his hands for some fucking reason are both pressing into Eggsy's legs now, one on his kneecap, the other digging into his thigh, and Eggsy's too numb to figure out whether Harry's trying to shove him away or hold him still. "Cold."

"Yeah, traitor, that's what snow feels like when you're fucking lying in it."

He feels Harry's gaze like fingers, the heavy weight of it on the place Eggsy's straddling him and then the slow lingering drag as he moves his eyes up and up to Eggsy's face, laughter quivering to a halt and fading into silent, rapid breaths. Eggsy stares back, stunned and strangely terrified. He thinks he feels the shifting slide of Harry's thumb moving on the soaked denim by his knee.

Then Harry shoves him aside and rakes a handful of snow, pelting it hard right at Vincent's chest as he's trying to sneak up on them. He stumbles, almost falls, saved by his cane and Eggsy grabbing his arm, and roars with laughter. "I surrender," he says, stripping off his glove to offer Harry a handshake and help him to his feet. "Bloody good match, though. Now where's that pot of tea you promised?"

They crowd around the fireplace in the library, clothes steaming alarmingly as they start to warm up and dry off. Eggsy, sitting on the rug and resting his back against Harry's armchair, can't work up the will to talk much; instead he lets the others' conversations wash over him, stuck in a weird brain loop of remembering being flat on his back in the gym with Harry above him then remembering being above Harry in the snow, holding his wrist down tight and transfixed by the sudden strange urgency in his stare. It's a frightening thing to examine and he tries to tuck it away, but it lingers like the afterimage of a firework, like bright insistent colours every time he blinks.

He blinks out of his reverie at the sound of his codename. "Hm, what?"

"Three of us," Vincent says. He's exchanged his damp clothes for pyjama trousers and an absurdly dashing smoking jacket in deep Kingsman burgundy and gold. "Three Galahads." He raises his teacup like a toast and drinks, moustache twitching above the rim of the china like he's smiling.

"Oh yeah. Sick." Eggsy tilts his head back and grins up at Harry. "Do you miss it?"

"The name? I suppose I did wear it for a very long time. But it's in good hands now."

"How about you?" Eggsy asks Vincent. "How long was you Galahad?"

"1942 until 1981."

He bites back a swear and turns it into, "Wow!" instead, but it comes out sounding sarcastic and makes him wince. "Why'd you retire?"

"Fifty-eight is no age to be racing about the planet playing the hero. It's a young man's game. One needs to have a sense of when to say enough is enough and pass the title on to someone more suitable."

"And that's Harry, is it?" Eggsy says, wrinkling his nose and faking uncertainty until Harry nudges him irritably with his knee and makes him laugh.

"I still worked here as an instructor until the early nineties. So did old Courtney–" He nods at Basil, who seems to have fallen asleep with his head slumped against the wing of his chair. "Languages and codebreaking for me, NLP and etiquette for him."

"And fencing," Basil adds, not bothering to open his eyes.

"You and your bloody fencing," Vincent mutters.

"Look, you old goat, it's an extremely valuable and very underrated skill."

"Maybe during the Civil War."

"A squabble you remember well, no doubt."

"I'm only four months older than you!"

"I rather enjoyed fencing lessons," Harry says, and Basil smiles wide and smug like he's just won a prize. "I was sorry to see them struck from the training roster."

Like Eggsy needed another thing to lose his shit over. He tries to imagine Harry as a youngster, wearing those ridiculous white suits and masks and brandishing a sword, but it all just sort of turns into a weird mash-up with that Dancing Cavalier film in Singin' in the Rain, all long hair and flouncy costumes and swashbuckling. It's too delightful to cope with, and he files the thought away to take out later and explore properly when he's alone. In his bed.

"Terribly good at them as well," Basil says wistfully. "I'll concede that guns are perhaps more practical. But there's no _flair_."

"Plenty of flair with umbrellas, though," Eggsy says, falling into the same kind of stupid nostalgic tone without meaning to then struggling to dig his way out of it before he makes himself sound like any more of a prick than he already does. "Shoulda seen Harry this one time he decked a pub full of scumbags. Like something out an Xbox game, it was unreal."

Behind them he hears the sound of footsteps on the corridor floorboards and twists to see Katharine and Arthur coming through the door. Harry sits up a tiny bit straighter in his chair and Eggsy tries not to roll his eyes. It's a bit pathetic. Kind of sweet in a sickening sort of way, seeing the unflusterable Harry Hart completely fucking losing it, but mostly vaguely embarrassing.

"I hear you've been rolling in the snow like children," Arthur says, eyeing them all one by one. Basil's pretending to be asleep again. Vincent's making that cringey grin emoji face, trying to hide behind his teacup. "Really, Basil, you with your dicky heart as well. Everybody above the age of fifty to the infirmary, please. I won't have so much as a sniffle. Guinevere, that includes you."

"How dare you?" Harry says. Eggsy's not sure whether that note of outrage in his voice is real or exaggerated. "I'm clearly thirty-five."

"You're clearly a bloody idiot," she says severely and swishes back out of the room. Harry sighs like someone's just kissed him.

"You really are, you know," Eggsy says, tipping his head back again to look at Harry upside-down, "a bloody idiot with no chill," and Harry swipes at the side of his head with his folded newspaper as Basil and Vincent get up and follow Arthur out of the room like scolded puppies.

* * *

The plan was to ease Harry back into the field gently, give him a couple of no-risk easy beginners' missions to make sure he was up for it. Stupidly, the plan never accounted for Harry's extraordinary ability to cause trouble and how much worse it's become after a year and a half in hospital beds and behind desks. 

"Guinevere, Arthur's gonna have your balls for this," Merlin tells him through clenched teeth over their comms, and Harry grins like the Joker and says, "I hope that's a promise," as Eggsy's giving him a leg up onto the rusting catwalk of the abandoned factory where they've chased their mark.

"Merlin, I just wanna go on record and officially state this weren't my idea." He climbs a couple of stacked barrels and leaps, hauling himself up behind Harry and racing after him. "Couldn't really say no to my boss, you know?"

"Tell that to your other boss when you're back here. In, get the access codes, out. Not in, steal a Lamborghini, chase a maniac through crumbling mountain roads, crash the Lamborghini, enter an place with no security cameras to hack, die."

"We've got the codes!" He goes for a shortcut, bounding up onto the handrail and flinging himself diagonally through the air to the adjacent platform rather than waste time taking a corner. Harry grins when Eggy lands beside him, bright-eyed and breathing hard. He's missed this, it's obvious. "Just a little detour. Nobody's gonna die but him."

"Abysmal waste of resources to assign another operative to the wetworks when we're here already." Harry draws his pistol, slowing when the shadow ahead of them darts into a dark doorway of some kind of control room. "Galahad. Lighter."

"Galahad, _no_ ," Merlin snaps in his ear, but Harry's mad fucking face is as infectious as the plague and when Eggsy primes his grenade and lobs it through the door all he can hear in his head is _Galahad YES_ until the explosion blows outwards with a thunderous noise, wood splintering and the roar of flame sounding more like a crashing wave than fire. For a moment he thinks it's a bullseye, til he hears clanging footsteps and swings himself around the side of the flaming rubble to pick up the hunt. "For fuck's sake," Merlin mutters. "Just shoot him, no need for all the pyrotechnics."

"Says you!"

"There's a time and a place and this is neither."

"Pretty sure it is," Eggsy says then, when a fucking battalion of henchmen in boiler suits and masks start spilling out the door in the opposite wall. "Merlin, I'm starting to feel like this was a mistake."

"Mind your diction. It's pronounced 'Harry'."

The first bullets rattle out through the air then and Eggsy dives off the catwalk, managing to snag the edge of the platform with his fingertips to slow his fall and landing almost noiselessly below. "Where is he, anyway?"

"Your seven." Eggsy darts around a column for cover and sees Harry crouched behind one of the barrels scattered all over the concrete floor, neatly picking off the advancing enemy with bullets to the heads. "Alright," Merlin says, resigned to his role as accessory, "I take back what I said about pyrotechnics. You've got fewer bullets than targets. How many more lighters do you have on you?"

"Erm." Eggsy's only slightly embarrassed, considering they're actually coming in useful this time instead of just being hoarded favourite toys. "Four?"

"Two," Harry says, digging them out of his pocket and throwing them to Eggsy.

"All of them?" Eggsy asks, just to be sure, because that sounds effective but pretty suicidal.

"All of them," Merlin confirms, "then run," so Eggsy shrugs and lights up and skids out from under the catwalk to send all six of the grenades clattering up onto the metal walkway between the stomping feet of the guys with guns. This time the blast is deafening, the spitting heat of the explosion and the scream of twisting metal hammering painfully into his ears and then receding to a high-pitched whine. He gets an arm up in time to deflect most of the flying shrapnel from his face and protect his glasses with his bulletproof sleeve, scrambling back from the groaning shattered platform as it pings free from its suspension cables and crashes to the floor in flames.

Eggsy really, really, really, really loves his job.

Merlin's talking in his ear again. "Guinevere, Galahad, report."

"Alive and kicking."

"As am I."

"Mm. Wait til Arthur gets hold of you. Alright, extraction team not on its way because they're back in Andorra which is where you should be, so I suppose you'd better start walking. Goodnight, gentlemen."

"He sounds pissed," Eggsy says, twirling his gun and sticking it back in its holster with a flourish like some dashing actor in an old Western.

"He'll get over it. I hope you have a solution to the transport issue, by the way, because I have no intention of walking anywhere."

Eggsy remembers flashes of red twisting through the mountain roads ahead of him, long smooth curves of body and window.

"I know how to hotwire a car," he says, eyebrow raising as Harry smirks. "Heard a rumour there's an almost mint F12 parked out there if you fancy a spin."

He even opens the passenger door for Harry, because he's a fucking gentleman now.

* * *

Roxy's as unsympathetic as expected, eyeing him sideways as he rants yet again in the Starbucks queue the same way she did when he thought he'd picked a butch little bulldog back in training. 

"If he doesn't know already he's as stupid as you are," she tells him when he finally stops to take a breath. "Heart eyes emoji face. It'd be sweet if it weren't so ridiculous."

"What's ridiculous about it? He's fucking flawless." That's not true really. He's found out all Harry's trouble areas since their whatever it is, relationship, shifted from mentor-pupil to friends: Harry is impatient, snobby over weird shit despite his championing the chavvy underdogs of the world, catty as fuck when he's tired or annoyed or just doesn't like someone, an absolute jobsworth when it comes to mission reports being submitted within point three seconds of getting home, and he puts the milk in first when he's making tea which is just fucking unacceptable no matter what prissy excuse he tries to give about delicate china teacups. Overall, though. Still pretty fucking flawless. He's funny too, now he's let his guard down a bit, that biting sharp clever sort of funny, all astute observations and wordplay. He's a mate as good as any, supportive and considerate and not afraid to call Eggsy out on his frequent bullshit for his own good. Also he's got really massive beautiful hands – oops, he said that bit out loud, and Roxy's looking at him like he's something nasty she stepped on in the street.

"Make a move or get over him. You're twenty-six, not fourteen."

"Ain't that easy," he complains.

"Of course it is. Watch this. Morning," she says to the guy behind the counter when they reach the front of the queue. "Two cappuccinos, please, one tall, one short."

"Names?" he asks her, poised with a Sharpie.

"Tall is Eggsy." He spells it 'Egsy' which is a fairly good attempt considering it's not even a real word. "The other, 07794..."

The kid's eyes go comically wide and he stares at her. Roxy stares back, a mask of awkward nerves even though she fucking knows exactly what she's doing. She's even biting her lip like she's not sure this is a good idea. Beside her, Eggsy's trying not to laugh as she finishes her number, tells him her name, and holds a tenner out while looking at him shyly through her eyelashes.

"Um, alright," the kid says, grinning and flustered as he writes his own number on the cup below hers, and Roxy beams at him, faking giddy relief at not being shot down and hustling Eggsy away to the end counter after she's got her change.

"See," she murmurs quietly so the guy can't hear her. "You want something, you ask for it or you offer it. If you're told no you accept it gracefully and move on. It's literally that simple."

"And that's what you want, is it?" he asks uncertainly, glancing back over at the guy on the till who can't be more than nineteen and has a lip ring and hair that's not been brushed. Roxy's last girlfriend was a forty year old Italian lawyer. Her last boyfriend was forty-eight and worked for IMF. "Don't seem like your kinda bloke."

"Well neither are you," she says sweetly, "and yet somehow here we are."

They weave between the tables when they get their coffees, heading for armchairs in the corner of the window. They get looked at on their way, they always do. It's not like seeing people in nice suits is a rarity in this area of London, but they're too often gobby bankers shouting into mobile phones and treating all the baristas like shit. Maybe it's a bit of a novelty when people in suits obviously costing thousands aren't complete arseholes, maybe it's just something magical about the cut of Kingsman suits that makes anybody wearing one completely fucking irresistible. Whatever it is, they always get looked at twice as much when they're together: "Good morning, madam," Eggsy says in his best Harry voice to an old lady trying to sneak a sideways look at his arse as he passes, and she drops her piece of toast in alarm.

Roxy's laugh shows in the quiver of her mouth instead of as a sound and she murmurs, "Think you've pulled too," as she settles into her chair, crossing her legs neatly and sliding her scarf out from beneath the back of her ponytail. "She's about in your preferred age range, isn't she?"

"Fuck off, grave robber, you can talk!"

"I'm not judging." She's got a killer smirk in her eyes, although her face is otherwise perfectly composed now. Almost literally a killer smirk – he's seen her look at people like that moments before shooting them in the head or breaking their neck between her twisting forearms. "Just so you know, my glasses feed is transmitting to my home terminal and it'd take one tap just here—" Her fingertips hover half an inch away from the side of her frames "—to send the saved file straight to Arthur and Guinevere."

"You fucking would not."

"I won't if you man up and tell him."

"Hope you choke on that drink." She just grins at him, vicious and toothy like a shark. "Rox," Eggsy says, faintly desperate, "I'd just fuck shit up if I said. He's all over Arthur. She's like the love of his life, Merlin said he's fancied her since he was like eighteen."

"Okay, Eggsy, tell me who I'm describing: small angry blond with no tits who looks gorgeous in a waistcoat."

"Arthur."

"And?"

"You."

She kicks his ankle hard under the table. " _And_?"

"You're fucking mental."

"I'm fucking _right_ ," she says viciously. "He's got a type and you're it."

"Seventy-five year old woman?"

"Now you're just being difficult. If you didn't have your tongue so far up his arse already you'd be able to see the way he looks at you." She plugs her earbuds in and starts scrolling through Spotify, ignoring him, and Eggsy sits there dumbly trying to recall the last time Harry looked at him. He remembers being glared at the previous night when he rolled up at Harry's door half-cut and rumpled after a honeypot mission and asked to borrow his shower so his mum wouldn't give him a hard time about sleeping around. Vaguely remembers something gentler in Harry's eyes when he came to the bathroom door later and handed Eggsy a pair of trackie bottoms and a soft old rugby shirt to change into. He thought at the time Harry was laughing at him for still being scared of his mum knowing he had a functioning dick. A bit of hindsight paired with a lot of wishful thinking makes him wonder if—

"On me," says the scruffy kid from earlier as he slides a plate with a tiny red jam tart over the table to Roxy then stands there awkwardly like he's waiting to be told whether he got it right or wrong.

She pulls out her earphones and exclaims, "Oh, you're lovely!" so he blushes all the way under his eyes like some anime character.

"Oi," Eggsy says, irritation only half-pretend, "where's mine?" and the guy looks at him like he didn't even realise there was someone else at the table.

"You didn't give me your phone number."

"Do you want it?"

"Not really...?"

"Alright, fine. Have fun with this one, then. She farts in her sleep like a fucking machine."

"Let's take this outside if you dare." She's giving him the Medusa eyes, fading into a soft smile as she looks up at the kid. "Excuse me, I have to go to work. I'll phone you later, okay?"

Eggsy considers running but that'd probably just make it worse, he'd just spend the next weeks or months constantly on edge bracing for a surprise revenge attack, so he waits for her outside the door and takes the dead arm she gives him with as much contrite good grace as he can manage, which isn't much.

"It's true, though," he grumbles, rubbing his arm sulkily while Roxy taps the kid's number and name – Harry, of all the fucking things – into her phone and eats the miniature jam tart in one bite.

"Doesn't mean you have to yell it in public," she says with her mouth full.

"You're gonna break that child's heart."

"I won't. I'll let him down gently."

"The last bloke you let down gently got drunk and sang James Blunt at your windows through a megaphone."

"Gareth's insecurities are not my problem." She stops in front of the shop, brushing off her lapels. "Crumbs?"

"Nope. Perfect."

"Alright." She sweeps through the door ahead of him and up the stairs to the dining room, where she on purpose takes the spare seat by Gawain's hologram and makes Eggsy sit opposite Harry for a whole torturous hour because Roxy's a fucking monster.

* * *

"Can I drive?" Eggsy asks for about the hundredth time, and for about the hundredth time Margaret gives him an amused sideways glance and tells him no. She does it politely, she always calls him sir – and that's weird, that's something he's still not ever gonna get used to – but he can tell she's smirking behind that façade of good manners. "Come on! Lemme drive, I won't tell no one."

"Fly, sir."

"Fly, whatever, let me have a go."

They're just reaching the English coast, where the deep black of the sea becomes a meandering line of lights, pinpricks of windows and maps of streetlamps and the ever-moving shimmer of cars on the roads. Eleven hours since they left Thailand, and she's not shown a single sign of cracking. Unbelievable.

"Maggie. Meg."

"Margaret, sir."

"Ain't we mates by now? How long we been mates, me and you?"

"It seems like a fucking eternity."

That makes him laugh and he gives up, sinking down in his seat to enjoy the view as they close in on home. "You're good. Why ain't you an agent? You're fucking nails, you ain't breaking for nothing."

"Well, nobody's proposed me yet," she says with a meaningful look that turns into a fleeting grin.

"Oh yeah, now I fucking see how it is. Bribery. If I propose you next time, you'll let me fly?"

Eyes ahead again, voice sounding softly scandalised: "Of course not, sir. I'm offended you'd even suggest it."

"Oh my days, you're killing me."

"If you stop prancing all over the world for five minutes and actually take some lessons I'd be happy to let you fly my plane."

"Prancing all over the world. Thanks. That's exactly what my job is, yeah." He prods carefully at his bruised ribs to see if they still hurt, which is pretty stupid because yeah they fucking do. Bulletproof suits are literal lifesavers but the wallop of a bullet or three at close range still hurts like fuck. "God I want my bed. I'm gonna sleep for like four days straight then get a kebab then sleep three more days."

"Jealous," Margaret says, a tad wistfully. "I'm taking Pelleas to Argentina tomorrow."

"Another long haul? You wanna tell 'em you need a holiday."

"Might at least get a bit of sunbathing in while she's working, I suppose. We're landing soon, sir, strap in properly please if you're staying up here."

"No, shit, I still gotta pack all my stuff."

"Why bother? You know I love it when you leave the place a pigsty for me to clear up after you."

He tries his very best silent contrite puppy look on her – again no reaction, seriously, _nails_ – then heads into the back to start gathering up all the scattered detritus of a long boring plane trip, book and phone and Xbox, picking a fly off the surface of the Coke he poured several hours ago and downing it in one even though it's gone flat and warm, fastening the shirt buttons he opened and neatly re-knotting his tie so he'll look halfway presentable if he bumps into anyone between the plane and the showers.

"Galahad." Margaret's voice coming through the speaker above the cockpit door makes him jump and he laughs at himself, glad she can't see him. "Sorry, sir, bit of a traffic jam, Guinevere and Kay are landing too so we'll just be a few more minutes."

Tie loosened and buttons back open, Eggsy settles back in his chair, taps in the passcode on his phone to take a selfie of his unimpressed face, and Snapchats it to Harry and Steven, captioned "Get out the way!!" Moments later his phone buzzes once and then again, a photo of a middle finger and a smugly smiling emoji face from Steven and a Whatsapp message from Harry: _How was Thailand?_

 _Hot_ , he replies. _I'd shoot my dog for a shower rn._

_There's a shower on the plane._

_Water pressures like being gently cried on by a woman in Merchant Ivory._

_Agreed.  
P.S. A+ imagery._

_Thanks. How was Iceland?_

_Cold, mostly, but then the volcano erupted. I'd shoot your dog for a shower too._

_Well see you in there then.  
Fuck that sounded weird sorry! LMFAO_

_Yes, I was just wondering how I ought to respond._

_Lmao soz Harry XD_

_Landing. I'll have a cup of tea waiting._

_You are a legend & hero x_

Harry's left him tea before on the few occasions their flights home have coincided, or when he's been working stupidly late or stupidly early in his office, steaming cups of liquid bliss left on the table by the door in the hangar with notes like "EGGSY'S TEA. Do not drink; contains 4 spoons of sugar" written on Post-Its on the side, but this time he's there in person, looking as rumpled and tired as Eggsy feels, chatting away to one of the mechanics with a triangle of polystyrene cups held carefully between his hands.

Being arse over tit in love is a weird thing. The knowledge of it sits heavy in Eggsy's stomach every day, like a meal too huge to digest. It doesn't get in the way, it's easy enough to ignore, but sometimes when he sees Harry the heartburn starts and – _this metaphor's getting a bit much, Eggsy_ , Roxy said with a pained look on her face when he tried to explain it one night in the pub after too many shots, so he shut up after that and went back to trying to deal with shit on his own. It's alright. It never gets in the way. Sometimes he's sure Harry feels it too, and that's terrifying, and sometimes he's sure Harry's playing along because he thinks Eggsy's teasing, which is a different sort of terrifying, but most of the time they're just friends now they're past the strange awkward stage of mentor and trainee, and it's incredible, it's better than anything. Everyone should have a friend who brings tea and Whatsapp banter at five in the morning.

"Which one's mine?" he calls over the concrete as he's coming down the plane steps.

Harry lifts the cups to his face and sniffs at them, grimacing and tapping one with his little finger. "The one you need to chew like toffee. You'll lose your teeth by the time you're thirty."

"Good, then you'll finally stop giving me shit about how I'm gonna lose my teeth."

"Darjeeling for Margaret," Harry tells the mechanic, leaving the cup on the table and sipping at his own as he follows Eggsy out into the waiting lift. "Galahad, your suit's a state."

"Guess how many times I got shot." He presses the button for the gym floor and stands back against the opposite wall, spreading his arms to show off his battered jacket.

"I don't know. Twenty."

"I actually don't know either but it was a fucking lot, yeah?"

"It's not a competition. You're not supposed to get shot. Dodge."

"Dodge _bullets_? I know you got high standards but I ain't Superman."

"Come on, now." Harry's eyes are smiling over the rim of his cup. "You're quite super."

"Fuck off," Eggsy tells him, gently kicking at the toe of Harry's shoe with his own, careful not to deploy the blade. "Make me blush. What kind of gentleman are you?"

He can't tell whether he's imagining it or there's just weird lighting in the lift but Harry sort of looks like he's a bit warm in the face too, although the doors ping open then and he strides out down the corridor towards the locker room before Eggsy can get a second glance. He follows after, this bizarre sense of pride warming him through as if getting past Harry's defences is an unlocked achievement in a game. This is how it is, then. Flirt chicken. Alright. They've not played this for a while and there's no better location for it than naked in adjacent showers. Steven's singing some old Motown song loudly and tunelessly from his own cubicle somewhere in the cloud of steam, which kind of ruins the mood, but Eggsy's too tired and too satisfied about a job well done to care. Flirting with Harry always came as naturally as breathing right from the start anyway, even before they were really friends. The only thing that's changed is how much he means it now.

"Shit," he hears Harry say, then louder, "Eggsy? May I borrow your shampoo?"

"Use soap like a real man."

"Real men lend their shampoo to friends in need."

"Alright but don't have a fit cos it's not your posh bloke shit. Heads up." He stretches up and drops the Head & Shoulders bottle over the partition, grinning to himself at Harry's whingey little _ow_ noise. "You wanna borrow my loofah and rubber ducky too?"

"I'd rather not think about where you've put either of those things."

"You sure about that?"

Harry's silent then and Eggsy's brain is just starting up a despairing round of _fuck fuck oh fuck too far gone too far fuck_ when the plastic bottle sails back over the partition and hits him neatly on the shoulder.

"Thank you. Much obliged."

"Wanker," he grumbles, but that's an imprudent thought to suddenly have in his head when he's in the middle of washing his bits. He does it quickly to get it over with, trying not to wonder what kind of reaction there'd be if he nipped around the wall between them and pressed Harry up against the tiles with a tongue in his mouth and a wet fist closed tight around his cock. A polite rejection would be so much worse than a punch in the teeth somehow, but—

"Report this afternoon, Guinevere," Steven calls from across the room and Eggsy's eyes snap open, pervy daydreams in tatters.

"Yes, I'll believe that when I see it."

"On my honour, it won't be late this time. Night, chaps."

The door bangs behind him, echoing noisily around the metal lockers, and Eggsy quickly finishes washing and shuts off the shower – partly because the moment's shattered and he doesn't want to be naked this close to Harry any more, partly because he's got his own teetering pile of late paperwork shoved in his desk drawer so nobody can see it and he can feel Harry's about to start nagging if he doesn't get away and look busy.

They dry off in silence, mostly, Harry accidentally humming My Girl from beneath the towel he's using to scrub his hair dry then cursing Steven under his breath. "Speaking of reports," he says suddenly, and Eggsy groans loudly as he's chucking his towel in the laundry bin.

"I knew you'd say something. Already half done. Started it on the plane."

"Bollocks. You're worse than anyone."

"Alright, keep your hair on! If I knew there was this much fucking form filling I woulda taken that amnesia dart back in the pub," he mutters, glaring into his locker and trying to figure out what to wear. He thought there was a clean suit ready but he vaguely remembers taking it home in a rare fit of tidiness, and now he's stuffed. He can't put his old suit back on. Harry's right, it's a state – it stinks of stale sweat, for one, but it's looking shameful even without that, charred and threadbare from the onslaught of bullets back in Thailand and several missions before it. Instead he digs around the floor of his locker and finds some old grey trackies, clean enough to be wearable, and a t-shirt with a 007 logo that someone – he suspects Merlin, after the number of arguments they've had about stolen gadget ideas – got him for last year's Secret Santa. Harry, already half-dressed beside him by now, is shaking his head in despair that's only half joke.

"Appalling. You know you're overdue a set of new suits. I realise you've got a week off but I want you in the shop for a fitting tomorrow."

"Harry, bruv, don't fuck with my plans to sleep a hundred and fifty hours straight."

"Galahad, _bruv_ , that's an order, not a suggestion."

Instinct says look at him, look him in the eye and acknowledge the order like any other normal person would, but Harry's not wearing a shirt and Eggsy's not wearing trousers and whether Harry's got a stern look on his face or an amused one it doesn't matter; either way it's going to be better for everyone at this particular point in time if Eggsy stays sitting down and hunched over. He risks a quick look back over his shoulder as he's pulling his socks on and manages to say, slightly strangled, " _Yes_ , Guinevere," but then he hears the gentle clink of the coat hanger against the locker door he hooked it over and turns, curious, to see Harry holding the cuff of the jacket between his fingers, sliding his thumb slowly over the button. Heat prickles through him, a rushing wave of it. If Harry ever did that while Eggsy was actually _in_ his suit...

"Bloody hell, I just realised. This is the one I had made for you."

"Yeah," he says helplessly, dragging his trackies and trainers on and keeping his back to Harry because he doesn't trust the weird things his face does whenever he's forced to remember those horrible few days back before he was even a proper Kingsman.

"Eggsy, that was over two years ago. You shouldn't wear these things for more than a few missions at a time, the fabric loses all its resiliency. No wonder you're lousy with bruises, it's a miracle the damn thing didn't tear."

"Yeah, well." What's the fucking alternative, take it home and sleep with it next to him in the bed? Frame it on his living room wall? Keep it folded in tissue paper and mothballs in a safe deposit box? "I like this suit," he finishes lamely. "It's all symbolic and shit, you know?"

"Symbolism isn't going to stop bullets." Harry sounds incredulous and kind of annoyed, but then he puts his hand on Eggsy's shoulder and squeezes gently, warm and reassuring and somehow understanding. How can someone have an understanding hand? _Fucksake_ , Eggsy thinks dismally, _I'm fucked. Love is the fucking worst._ "I've still got my first suit too," Harry says, in the low secret tones of a confessional. "Well, the jacket. Unfortunately, I lost the trousers."

"How the fuck did you lose your trousers? Do I even wanna know?"

"Alligators."

Eggsy turns to look at him properly then, eyes narrowed as he scrutinises Harry's carefully blank face. "You taking the piss or are you actually for real?"

"I'm afraid that's classified."

"Harry, you can't half tell a story that might or might not be about alligators!"

"Come along. I'll take your measurements myself now, then you can rot in your bed all week in peace."

The train journey from HQ to the shop has never felt so long, an interminable chug-chug of wheels and murmured small talk. Flirt chicken is one thing, but it's something else now, something so comfortable that it's almost resignation. Too tired for artifice, but too tired for action, Eggsy sits opposite Harry and makes no attempt any more to hide the wandering path his gaze takes: Harry's eyes, his mouth, the line of his muscles beneath his shirt and open jacket, his hands where they're folded on his crossed knee. For his part Harry seems amused at first, makes a half-hearted effort to pretend he hasn't noticed, but by the third time Eggsy makes eye contact and holds it for several seconds longer than is usually considered polite, his grin broadens and he lets his crossed leg drop, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and staring Eggsy down with the viciousness of a tiger about to pounce.

"It's rude to stare."

"Rude to stare back," Eggsy counters, and Harry laughs quietly on an exhale, the last deliberate sound either of them makes for the rest of the journey. After that it's just roving eyes and quickened breathing, a shaky promise of something potentially huge hanging in the space between their seats, between their knees and the hands that keep moving as though they want to reach out and touch but never quite dare.

The shop is empty when they get there, all strange silver and shadows from the dingy dawn light coming through the front windows, and Harry stops in front of the table of folded fabric and runs a fingertip lightly over the striped cloth he chose for Eggsy's first suit. There's something odd in his expression, a bursting fondness at war with regret, although when he lifts his eyes to meet Eggsy's there's nothing in them but warmth.

"Same again?"

"Nothing's ever gonna be the same as that one."

"No, I suppose not."

 _Harry_ , he wants to say, but doesn't because he doesn't know what to say next. The name is hot on his tongue and he bites it back, just waiting, apprehension holding him tight somewhere in the chest.

"Do you..." Harry starts, then stops and his brows flicker into a frown that smoothes back out as soon as it appears. "Eggsy, if you want to go home and have the tailors measure you later that's fine. You look like you're about to fall asleep on your feet."

"Well we're here now, ain't we? Fitting room two?" Eggsy suggests, just to see what happens, and can't stop a burst of laughter when Harry does that fucking smirk of his and says, "One would suit us better, I should think," as he turns on his heel and goes back through the door they've just exited.

He's never had this sort of absurd reaction to a fucking tape measure before. He curls his thumbs tightly inside his fists and squeezes hard, breathing to a slow count in his head to make it less obvious how much he suddenly needs to pant like JB does any time the little bastard has to run. Harry, jacket removed and hung neatly on a rail, shirt sleeves rolled up for ease of movement, drops to one knee in front of him and stretches the tape tight, moving with a practised fluidity from measurement to measurement the way he moves through his combat exercises in the gym. It's a new angle but one that nevertheless feels disturbingly familiar: the crown of Harry's head, the neat line of the parting in his hair, the top edge of his glasses, the slope of his nose. His mouth. He's wearing more clothes than Eggsy's imagined in his private little fantasies, although there's something about that final standing barrier that unfurls a creeping heat through his stomach and sends it tingling along his limbs. He watches Harry make some notes on a clipboard, the fastidiously neat loops of his handwriting flowing from the gold nib of his pen, and decides: _This is real and I don't wanna play games no more_.

"Your shoulders are broader," Harry remarks as he recaps his pen and puts it back in his pocket. "The gymnastics training is really... what's wrong?"

Eggsy's dry throat clicks when he swallows. He stares down at Harry on one knee like a man proposing or – more apropos – a knight from old legend, and Harry stares back, mildly quizzical at first and then suddenly flustered with understanding. Eggsy moves his hand just a little bit, just enough, and Harry's breath catches hoarse in his throat as he leans to nudge his cheek into the cup of Eggsy's palm and shaking fingers. He seems to gather himself after that, closing his eyes for a moment and then looking up at Eggsy, startling fervour lightened by a slightly crooked smile.

"I see."

"Do you fucking see, Harry?"

"So this is happening now."

"Yep."

"I thought you were tired."

"Nope."

"Well, I suppose you'd better come down here, then."

It feels like the grin is splitting his face in half. "You come up here."

For a moment there's a wall of space between them as Harry stands, dense with laboured breaths and the heavy thud of two heartbeats. Eggsy's hand feels empty without the press of Harry's cheek and clenching jaw, and he fills it instead with the soft short hair at the back of Harry's head. It makes Harry sigh, a wobble of a sound when usually he's as sure as anything, and his palms slide roughly up the front of Eggsy's t-shirt and come to rest warm on the sides of his neck, one thumb smoothing across the line of his cheekbone. There's a gentle clack as their glasses frames touch, Harry moving to rest his forehead on Eggsy's. This close he's just a blur of skin and shapes, eyes stuttering closed and the brush of brown lashes magnified behind his lenses.

"And now?" he asks, bumping his nose against Eggsy's as though to prompt him, as though he needs to check this one last time.

It's barely a kiss at first, it's a magnet pull. Eggsy can feel the twitch of a smile against his mouth, the thumb on his cheekbone again, and his breath escapes him through his nose with a sound he never knew he could make – then Harry's tongue touches his and he ruins it by laughing, fucking _laughing_.

"I'll admit it's been a while but that's not quite the reaction I expected," Harry says mildly. His lips find Eggsy's cheek, pressing a constellation of kisses there while Eggsy tilts his head to offer more of his skin and realises that controlling himself is neither easy nor something he particularly wants to do anyway as long as his idiotic breakdown is making Harry run his hands over his face, neck, arms, back, fucking _everywhere_ like this, like he's totally happy to carry on amusing himself until Eggsy's back in the room.

"I ain't laughing cos it's funny, it's just... fucking _finally_."

"Fucking finally," Harry agrees, gripping Eggsy's chin between his thumb and fingers and tilting his head to mouth a line of kisses across his fluttering pulse. "May I continue?"

" _Yes_ , Harry."

The kiss that comes next is almost an attack, and his reaction a surrender; Eggsy opens to its warmth and the rough slide of Harry's tongue, the fingers that return to his face and cup close around his jaw to hold him there. He laughs when their glasses crash again, exhilarated and breathless, and snatches both pairs from their faces to chuck them onto the table out of the way. Harry's face seems curiously young without them, wide-eyed and wet-mouthed with an irresistible smudge of pink staining each cheek, and Eggsy kisses him there, unplanned and sincere, brushing his lips across Harry's temple, under his eyes, the tip of his nose, the space between his eyebrows, the salt tang of sweat on the twisted scar at his cheekbone, while Harry's hands slip beneath the hem of his t-shirt and find his bare skin, fingertips leaving ten comet trails of goosebumps all up and down his back. That's a revelation, one that shoves out a gentle _oh FUCK_ on his next exhale and makes him drop his forehead to rest against Harry's shoulder.

Harry's voice is an amused murmur in his ear. "This is _not_ how I imagined you'd kiss."

"Full of surprises and all that." He keeps his face pressed there, hiding a grin in the fabric of Harry's shirt. "You've imagined it?"

"About as much as you have, I'd wager."

"Fuck, that much? How'd you ever manage to get anything else done?" The barely-there trail of fingertips on the small of his back becomes the gentle rasp of nails, and his hand tightens desperately around a fistful of Harry's shirt and tie and neat little buttons. "Fuck, oh my god—"

Harry's mouth finds his neck again, strangling his babble of swears into a giddy noise of need. The kisses he begins to press there are slow and warm, maddeningly light little touches against the throb of Eggsy's flesh and then the sudden dark intensity of teeth and suction drawing blood up to the surface of his skin in a bruise as certain as the ones caused by bullets before. It makes him hiss with pain and a desperate sort of longing, fingers clenching again in Harry's shirt as Eggsy sags against him.

"Apologies," Harry murmurs against the sore spot, words and breath thrumming hot against Eggsy's skin. "I ought to have asked first."

"Carte blanche," Eggsy says, breathless and trembling with adrenaline, "and if you fucking say anything about my fucking French accent again I'll—" Nothing, actually, except open his mouth to the kiss that finds him then. He presses back against Harry with an urgency that almost overwhelms them both; he leans too far too fast, Harry stumbles, they collapse into the old Chesterfield chair in a tangle of limbs and laughter and then spend far too long trying to make the space meant for one work for two before giving it up and folding onto the floor instead. Harry, an inelegant sprawl in perfect tailoring, looks fucking debauched already with his hair falling over his forehead and eyes dark with promise, leaning there against the leather chair with a smile that's part smirk and part dazed disbelief.

"I'll say nothing at all that might make you withdraw such a kind offer."

Eggsy swings a leg over and knee-walks up the length of Harry's thighs, braced there with two firm hands gripping the side of his trackies. "Harry fucking Hart," he says quietly. He can feel himself grinning like an idiot, fingers stroking lightly through Harry's untidy hair and pushing the fallen strands back into place. "That kind offer's there for good and you fucking know it. Platinum loyalty card." His eyes fall closed at Harry's breathed little huff of laughter and the touch of his mouth pressing warm, slow, sure again at the side of Eggsy's neck.

"Platinum now? Things are escalating."

"You gonna make another joke about popping one's cherry?"

"I rather thought you'd have passed that milestone already. I should fucking hope so at your age."

"Yeah, but not with _you_."

"Well, I'd be happy to—"

Eggsy interrupts, aching with smiling. "How happy?"

"Bloody happy."

"Alright then."

Part of him wants to lean back in and just fucking go to town, kiss Harry's face right off his skull, fight to his skin through the fastenings of his suit without bothering to strip him properly – but there's an inevitability to all of this, a sudden strange sweetness that makes the idea of rushing it feel as sacrilegious as slamming a glass of his favourite '89 Macallan like it's a Friday night tequila shot. Instead he tilts his head again and taps a forefinger against his neck until Harry rumbles a quiet, marvelling laugh from somewhere deep down and presses his lips back where they were before, drawing a path of careful kisses across Eggsy's pulse, the curve of his jaw, the livid bruise that seems to throb with his heartbeats. Positioned like this, head thrown back and twisted to the side, Eggsy can't help seeing their reflections in one of the room's mirrors, or the half-choked noise that breaks free when he does: Harry, hair wild and cheeks flushed, is lost in him like nobody's ever bothered to be before, eyes closed and fingers splayed wide over Eggsy's hips with his thumbs stroking the V of muscles between the waistband of his trackies and the hem of his lifted t-shirt as though he's trying to put his hands everywhere at once. Eggsy sees a pink glimpse of tongue at the same time as he feels its rough warmth tracing a line down to his clavicle, and his hands shake as he loosens Harry's tie to get to the collar buttons.

"What is it with you and my neck?" he asks, fighting to keep a steady voice, and Harry's eyes flicker open and find Eggsy's in the mirror as his mouth bites lightly, sucks for a moment, and fucking _smirks_ like the devil.

"It's a charming neck. Could have been carved by Michelangelo. I almost feel the urge to write a sonnet about it."

"Are you taking the piss?"

"At least allow me a limerick."

"Good luck with that yeah, nothing rhymes with Eggsy. Except like... begsy, which is what you're gonna be doing in a minute, I fucking swear to god." Harry's laughter, sharp and surprised, breaks through the hush of the room, and his head falls back against the seat cushion like a surrender; Eggsy leans in for payback, feeling the vibration of the sound buzz against his lips as he kisses up Harry's throat, over his chin, coming to rest just a breath away from his mouth and resting their foreheads together again. "You wanna go back to yours, or...?"

"I'm afraid I'm woefully underprepared regarding safety and such." He sounds weirdly formal and suddenly a bit awkward, nothing at all like his usual calm confidence; when Eggsy runs a pair of fingers slowly beneath the straps of Harry's shoulder holsters his breath comes out ragged, chased by a strangled laugh. "Not the sort of safety I meant."

"We could go back to mine." Eggsy tilts his head, the side of his nose touching Harry's and their mouths just a whisper away from a kiss. "If you wanna tell my mum to put on headphones for a bit."

"Fuck no, let's find a Boots."

Buying emergency lube and johnnies at eight a.m. with a man almost twice his age is a new one on him. Laughter brims up from somewhere deep, trapped behind his tightly-pressed lips as he fights himself to keep quiet because how fucking immature, seriously? But Harry's studying the shelves calmly as though he's selecting a newspaper or a bottle of wine, the woman stacking some bits across the aisle is giving them both evils, and Eggsy resorts to poking himself hard in the ribs right on the worst bruise so he doesn't laugh out loud. It doesn't help much, especially not when Harry notices their frosty audience and the corner of his mouth twitches in a barely-there smirk.

"Which one, darling?" he asks, in a low voice like fucking Clark Gable or one of those other smooth bastards from old films. The woman's ears go red.

"Oh, er, the twelve pack, yeah? Think that'll do us til lunchtime at least."

In the queue to pay he stands slightly on tiptoe behind Harry, unable to resist the burning urge to press a kiss to the stripe of bare skin above his shirt collar, and murmurs against his ear, "Winding that poor old bag up. Gentleman my arse," and when Harry half-turns to look at him, eyebrow arched, and says, "Yes, I fully intend to gentleman your arse as soon as possible," Eggsy stifles a laugh there against the grey fabric of his jacket, helping himself to a pinch of Harry's backside and giving neither shits nor fucks about the disgruntled coughing from the man waiting to buy a sandwich behind them.

They're barely inside the house before Harry's on him again, fingers twisting and pulling in the back of Eggsy's hair and cushioning him from a nasty crack to the head as he's pushed up against the slamming front door and kissed like it's the first time, like the stuff in the fitting room never happened. He kisses back, desperate and wet and clumsy with eagerness so the Boots carrier bag still dangling from his wrist bumps against the front of Harry's shirt when Eggsy yanks at the knot in his tie, rustling between them like some weird klaxon trumpeting to the whole world that this is a thing that is really truly actually fucking happening. He shoves the bag in his pocket to get it out of the way and slides the knot loose, easing it right down to Harry's sternum and then fumbling his shirt buttons open to get to him, the warm thud of his heartbeat, the fine brush of dark hair covering lean muscle and flushing skin.

"Alright?" Eggsy murmurs against Harry's mouth, tracing the lines of his collarbones with shaking fingertips.

"You'll do."

"Cheeky fucker. Get upstairs." Up close, he sees the glint of mirth in Harry's eyes become something darker then, more hungry and disarmingly sincere as he slips the hand entwined in Eggsy's hair down the length of his arm to curl close around his wrist and lead him wordlessly to the bedroom. Eggsy follows just slowly enough to be able to feel the needy tug of Harry's hand and the prickle of goosebumps it sets off, breathless and irrationally terrified that he's going to trip over his feet and faceplant on the staircase like an idiot even with Harry's grip on him, thumb rubbing gentle circles against his skin, but the feeling only lingers for a moment: Harry's room, although private and unknown, a place he's only seen that one time he half-carried, half-dragged Harry to bed when he fell asleep on the couch after too much whisky, is somehow instantly familiar in every way. Harry's scent is there infusing the air, the spice of expensive cologne tempered by the weirdly normal undertones of some fussy floral plug-in air freshener and cottony detergent – and that just makes him think of sheets and bed and messing up the sheets on the bed and inside him something seems to lurch, an excited little rumble in his stomach like he's just avoided a fall or driven too quickly over a bump in the road. _It's happening. It's real. What the fuck_.

"Is this," Harry starts at the same time as Eggsy says, " _Harry_ ," then they're kissing again and his wrist misses Harry's fingers as soon as they release him, feeling cool and abandoned until Harry unzips his jacket for him and somehow manages to get it off along with his t-shirt and hat in an efficient move just a step below a magic trick. The staccato thump of Eggsy's heartbeat pulsing blood too quickly around his veins seems to make his fingers tingle, makes them clumsy on the rest of Harry's buttons and on the knot of his tie until he gives up with a frustrated huff of muted swearing and starts dragging the shirt out of his waistband instead. He feels Harry's mouth on his neck again then, nose and lips ghosting over Eggsy's jaw and throbbing pulse in a rain of kisses that feels far too gentle for the roiling heat it's drawing up inside him; he can feel the dull flare of flaming cheeks, sweat springing damp at his nape, and again the gentle pain of nails in the skin of his bare back that makes him suck in a shocked breath and let it out in a wavering sigh infected like _please_.

"Is this alright?"

Uninterrupted, Harry's question slices the moment in half and for a moment Eggsy's taken aback by the uncertainty in it and the way it takes Harry a while to meet his eyes when Eggsy twists away from the mouth that's come to rest on his shoulder. He tips Harry's chin up with his fingers, leans in to kiss him, and then, because he can't think of a better way to say _fucking yes it's alright are you fucking crazy_ , his hands go straight to Harry's arse and drag him closer there so he can feel the unmistakable answer pressing hard against his thigh.

"Oh," Harry says. "Good."

All the times Eggsy's allowed himself to imagine what this would be like – and there have been so, so many – he's thought about witty one-liners, the suave curve of an eyebrow, a poised and focused sort of approach to getting it on as with pretty much everything else Harry does. Not now. Maybe that was Galahad, or Guinevere. This is Harry, and Harry is _trembling_. Eggsy watches him run his fingers through his hair, sweeping the sweaty locks back from where they've fallen messily over his damp forehead, then Harry's hand curls so gently around the side of Eggsy's neck that he thinks a single movement might scare him off and holds his breath, just waiting, letting Harry study his face until he's satisfied with whatever he finds there and smiles again suddenly, bright and giddy, the veneer of calm control falling away from him as quickly as his shirt and holsters and suit jacket when Eggsy finishes the rest of the buttons and pushes the fabric off his shoulders, remembering the cufflinks too late and then fighting the inside-out sleeves trying to get to them. Freed, Harry's hands go straight to Eggsy's arse and press him closer, holding him there and rocking steadily against him just once; the heat of his cock ruining the line of his trousers nudges against Eggsy's hip, and Eggsy feels the huff of Harry's exhaled laughter against his ear when a spill of frantic whispered swears break the hush of the room: _Harry Jesus fucking fuck oh my god fuck_ —

"Are you this talkative all the way through?" Harry murmurs against his cheek, pressing lingering kisses there until Eggsy's all but slumped against him, feeling weak and desperately off-balance between the triple assault of Harry's mouth and cock and fingers. Harry seems to be getting steadier as Eggsy loses his mind, a weird exhilarating seesaw of power, and Eggsy does what he can to claw them back level: squirming a hand in between the press of their bodies and sliding the full length of his palm and fingers across the front of Harry's trousers.

"Depends if you wanna try shutting me up with this."

Harry sounds like he's trying to swear too, but can't get past the first fricative. His hands fly to Eggsy's waistband, shoving the trackies down around his ankles and steadying the fabric with his foot so Eggsy can step out of the legs and kick them away. _Ain't fair_ , he wants to say, _how come I'm just in my pants now and you're still wearing half a suit_ , but the lithe arms wrapped tight around his body tug and manoeuvre so quickly that there barely seems to be a transition at all between standing there desperately dazed and kneeling astride Harry's thighs on the edge of the bed with Harry's mouth moving fucking _everywhere_ , searing wet kisses on his neck and chest and right down to suck a scatter of marks into the skin at his waist as Harry's fingers slide into the elastic of his pants. Eggsy surges up at that without meaning to, squirming and restless, belly resting now against Harry's shoulder and swears and pleas drooling out of his mouth while Harry leaves damp kisses and the hot tingle of gasped breaths against the curve of his hip.

"Lie back," Eggsy says, voice sounding thick and stupid in his own ears, "Harry, do it, get these – _fuuuck_ ," he whines helplessly at the pressure of fingertips in the flesh of his bared backside, squeezing and claiming. "Get your fucking trousers off right now or I'll rip—"

Harry's tongue finds his mouth again, hands stilling on Eggsy's waist for the entire length of one frankly fucking awesome ferocious kiss then heaving him onto his back on the bed. He's got space to breathe for a few seconds then, contorting to remove his socks without taking his eyes off Harry standing beside the bed, Harry's hands, Harry's long fingers nimbly slipping his fly buttons through and then shoving the fabric down over his narrow hips to disappear out of sight below the edge of the mattress. Eggsy reaches for him, fingers snagging in the waistband of his boxers and dragging him closer and then _closer_ until Harry gets the message and kneels astride him, amused eyes fluttering closed at the feeble grasp of Eggsy's shaking fingers on his still-clothed cock and the most beautiful little noise in the world escaping his parted lips.

"Like this?" Harry asks in a rough whisper, lining up and circling gently then going exactly where Eggsy's hands guide him until they find a rhythm between them, syncopated slow, and Eggsy's mumbling, "Yeah, perfect, don't stop, don't," until something inside him leaps and the smoulder catches light, then his fingertips dig hard into Harry's thighs and he finds himself saying, "No, no, stop, fuck, stop, I'll come, stop."

"Alright," Harry murmurs into Eggsy's mouth around the desperate slide of his tongue, "alright, easy, take a breath."

"Don't tell me take a breath, I'm fucking hyperventilating!" He starts laughing at himself, fingers twisting hard in the back of Harry's hair like an anchor – this feels like it should be awkward, sort of like it should be embarrassing, and maybe with anybody else it would be, but not with the way Harry's tucked his face into Eggsy's neck to kiss him there, slow and sucking just the awful teenage behind the bike sheds way he always liked it and never told anyone but Roxy, like Harry's some kind of fucking mind reader. "Harry, fucking _stop_ , I'm gonna come."

"I'd be most hurt if you didn't." Harry's voice vibrates against his throat, chased by the warm wet slide of his tongue and the shift of a smile forming on his lips, and Eggsy tugs his hair hard and says, "But not _yet_ , Jesus fuck I'm gonna kill you, _please_ —"

"Fine," Harry says and abruptly sits up, shuffling back to put a few inches of space between them. Eggsy reaches up with arms that feel detached from his shoulders and stuffs another pillow under his head for a better view, eyes roaming down the length of his own body and up to Harry's, the lean lines of his muscles and the weird way he seems to flush in his pale chest instead of in his cheeks, the way his stomach twitches slightly when Eggsy drags his fingertips there, tracing down the line of hair below his navel.

"Can I?"

" _May_ I."

"Yeah, keep that shit up you'll be lucky if I don't bite the fucking thing off." There's an awkward fumble of too many limbs and tricky balance, Harry moving from one knee to the other trying to get his underwear off without having to move too far away from Eggsy's waiting fingers, which curl around him as soon as he's bare and make him blow his breath out harshly, eyebrows furrowed and fingers clamped hard around Eggsy's knee behind him. "Alright?"

"Yes." That ridiculous brilliant dorky toothy smile spreads over his face, the one he usually suppresses in favour of his crooked little smirk, and he covers Eggsy's hand with his own to show him how to move, how hard, how fast, the twist at the tip. "I usually wake up before this part. Bloody alarm is determined not to let this happen."

"Oh my god are you actually serious." Harry doesn't say anything at that, just lifts Eggsy's hand to his face and swipes a few broad lines down his palm with his tongue before directing it back to his cock and the gleaming dribble of wet already there. "Harry, fucking _tell me_ or I'll stop."

"Tell you what?"

"Everything." He doesn't know where to look, Harry's face or both of their hands working together on Harry's cock – then he settles on the more southerly option, since he's already spent the last almost three years committing every line and crease and pore and lash of Harry's face to memory like a total creep. "You been dreaming about me?"

"I couldn't possibly tell you. The room would catch fire."

"I wanna know, tell me."

Harry's breathing harder, steady and still under control but his voice when he speaks is almost a whine and Eggsy wants to laugh at that, a thank you god sort of laugh of relief that Harry's as fucked up by all this as he is. "Here's a better idea," he says, leaning over Eggsy – laughing, breathy and delirious, when Eggsy can't resist a sucking biting kiss to his nipple when it's _right there_ above his face – and grabbing the Boots bag, holding out the box and bottle for Eggsy to take.

"Shit yeah. Fuck." His hands feel like they've never opened a fucking box before, like he's suddenly all thumbs or wearing gloves, as he rips into it and passes one of the condoms to Harry. "Get that on, like yesterday."

"On me or on you?" Harry asks, and time suddenly goes a bit wonky, slowed down like the lazy pour of treacle.

"Oh." He gets the sudden absurd thought _what if this is another recruitment test_ and wants to panic-laugh, like number one that's ridiculous and number two what the fuck is the right answer to a question like this anyway? All this time he's only bothered imagining it one way, because it's only ever happened one way before, at least with guys, but... "On me?" he tries, palms springing nervous hopeful sweat, and Harry turns his smile up to Wembley floodlight levels and says, just slightly tinged with teasing, "I imagine this'll work better if you take off your underpants," and Eggsy almost fucking kicks him in the face in his haste.

"Ten points to Gryffindor if you get that wrapper in the bin with your eyes closed," he says, trying to scratch back some of the lightness from earlier even though his eyes are fixed on the tearing foil and Harry's fingers and his chest is burning with breath. It's double when Harry starts stroking him, fingers hot on Eggsy's cock as he smoothes the latex down and leans in to drop a kiss in the sweaty hair on top of his head, settling an infuriating few inches too high so his thighs are pressing warm against Eggsy's sides and there might as well be a mile between where Eggsy is and where he wants to be.

"Challenge accepted," Harry murmurs into Eggsy's hair, and flicks the balled up bit of foil over his shoulder without bothering to look. Eggsy watches round the side of Harry's arm as it pings off the edge of the dresser and ricochets off both walls before dropping neatly into the bin at the corner.

"Oh my _god_. Harry, you fucking show off, you're such a fucking peacock!" He sort of wants to give him a dead arm and sort of wants to laugh and _really_ wants to kiss that fucking brilliant grin off his face, but Harry sits back out of the way astride Eggsy's thighs looking far too proud of himself and Eggsy can't do anything except grin up at him like a maniac, like JB at dinnertime, cheeks aching and heart bursting because Jesus fuck. "You been showing off since the fucking start, you been trying to impress me from the minute we met."

"Apparently my plan worked." He gestures down between them, the hard curving line of Eggsy's cock and the quiver in his stomach when Harry touches him gently with his thumb, circling lightly round the tip until he feels like he's melting right through the mattress and grabs Harry's wrist to stop him.

"I fucking knew it. I knew it. Strutting round in your nice suits all like _Eggsy look at this cool grenade, look how fit I am in my frilly apron cooking breakfast, have you seen all these romance films cos they make me think of me and you_."

"You talk too much," Harry says mildly and presses his palm firmly over Eggsy's mouth.

And that's weird, that's really fucking hot, _really_ hot in a way he's never considered before but fuck the rush of goosebumps that thrills through him at the contact leaves him feeling weak and dazed, lying there against the pillows meek and still while Harry finds the bottle, flicks the cap, and pours a chilly stream onto Eggsy's stomach. He whimpers pathetically at that, at the cool slick on his heated skin and then louder at the slippery touch of Harry's other hand, fingers drawing through the wet that's pooling in his navel and painting it in wide wet stripes up the length of his cock. Behind Harry's palm Eggsy's mouth falls open, tasting the salt sweat of skin, weird little pleading noises muffled and lost in life line and heart line.

"Share," he tries to say, then says it again when Harry finally moves his hand back down to the side of Eggsy's neck, damp fingertips stroking lightly through the hair behind his ear. " _Share_ , Harry, give it—" He holds out his hand, watches the growing smirk on Harry's face as he upends the bottle and squeezes more out into the cup of Eggsy's palm, and makes a fierce promise with himself that he's going to get Harry looking as desperate as he feels or fucking die trying.

All it takes is a couple of fingers up his bum, which is useful information to know.

Everything changes at the first, Harry's posture, the ever-present smirk, the cadence of his breathing, everything. He grasps Eggsy's other hand tightly at the second a few minutes later, fingers entwined, leaning his weight there and letting Eggsy hold him up. "Shit," he says when Eggsy starts to stroke inside him, in the sort of blissed out reverent wondering tone of voice people use when they're praying, not swearing.

"Yeah, please don't do that."

"Eggsy, do you need a gag?"

"Do you?" Eggsy retorts after he's slowly eased in a third wet finger beside the others, and Harry's mouth drops open to let loose the foulest string of swears Eggsy's heard since someone changed all of Merlin's screensavers to photos of Magic Mike. "Language like that, what'll the neighbours think?"

"Sod the neighbours," Harry says, almost snarls, and swipes Eggsy's hand away so he can line himself up and sink down on Eggsy's cock, inch by excruciatingly slow inch. There's a point where Eggsy's senses go supernova, like colours are clearer and scents are sharper and he hears the moment when their ragged breathing perfectly harmonises for two heaves in and out before Harry hisses a slower exhale and knocks them off beat. "Oh _fuck_."

"You alright? Don't hurt yourself."

"Calm down, Casanova, you're not that big."

"Fucksake, Harry, you know your compliments. Can't see why you're single."

"Am I single?" He reaches out for Eggsy's other hand, sliding through the lube slicking his skin until their fingers weave together properly, settling his weight there as he lifts up on his knees and sinks back down, so distractingly tight and warm that it takes a moment for Eggsy to realise what he's said. When he does he can't do anything but stare: Harry, better than dreams and daydreams and furtive shameful glances sneaked in the showers, flushed and smeared with lube and sweat and the lingering pink marks of Eggsy's grasping fingers. His hair's damp and darkened and falling over his forehead, and it's not a smirk on his mouth any more, it's a tiny, anxious smile. "I rather hoped this might be an ongoing arrangement."

"Gimme my hands back." As soon as he's released he reaches for Harry's hips, tilting him into a rhythm that creaks the bed and knocks the headboard annoyingly against the wall like a drum beat. It's hard to talk, it's hard to remember what words even are; he's been with plenty of people before, girls, mostly, but guys as well, awful honeypots and pretty decent downtime, but nothing, _nothing_ , ever like the feeling of years of hope finally paying off. "Harry," he says, breathless and shaking, teasing because the fucker deserves it if he's wanted this all along and done nothing about it, "I don't wanna be your mid life crisis."

"I'd quite like to live to a hundred and six."

"Be serious!"

"Eggsy," he says quietly, managing to cram the entire world into two murmured syllables and a dimpled grin, and Eggsy just fucking melts into the mattress like a fool, fingers pressing harder into the side of Harry's hips and sliding in the sweat there. Time's doing that funny thing again, slowing and condensing so everything he's aware of around him fades into nothing but the languorous slip and thrust of flesh, Harry's skin hot under his palms, Harry's heavy harsh breathing as he rocks himself towards a shaking gasping end. When he comes it's in his own hand and over Eggsy's stomach, the warmth of it smearing between them when he reaches down and hauls Eggsy up by his armpits into an urgent clumsy kiss, endless legs crossing close behind Eggsy's arse as Harry shudders there breathless in his lap.

"Oh my god," Eggsy mutters, muffled by Harry's mouth and tongue, "holy fuck, Harry, is this fucking real, pinch me," and Harry grins like the devil and pinches him as instructed – but with his teeth set firmly in the soft flesh of Eggsy's neck below his jaw, tongue laving scalding hot over the rising bruise there, and Eggsy comes like a fucking fire hose with a mouth full of jumbled swears that he can't articulate properly between the heaves of desperate breath.

"Stop looking at me like that," Harry says eventually. His words are dulled by the feather pillow he's had his face pressed into for the last ten minutes.

"Thought you were asleep," Eggsy whispers guiltily, curling closer into Harry's side and starting to sweep his fingertips feather-light up and down the length of Harry's naked back until he's wriggling. "Like what? You can't even see me, you're gonna suffocate."

"Like a child gawping at a boyband. I can feel it."

"Oh." He can't help laughing a bit, pressing his mouth to Harry's shoulder. "I ain't stopping now, I've always looked at you like that. Heart eyes emoji face, Roxy says. She's fucking brutal about you. I mean, about me about you."

Harry shifts beside him, just enough that Eggsy can see the glint of one eye just peeking out from the edge of the pillow. "Are you going to tell her?"

"You fucking kidding me, I'm gonna get Margaret to write it in the sky with her plane."

Laughing, Harry twists round completely and reaches for him, dragging his fingertips deliciously slow through Eggsy's sweaty hair and settling there at his nape. "I ought to thank her, really. Lancelot."

"Why?" Then a jolt of horrified panic: "She never told you all the embarrassing shit I been saying about your massive hands and stuff?"

He looks inordinately smug about that. Of course he does, the fucking egotist. "Well, no, but now I'm curious."

"Pretty sure me and your hands know each other well enough by now. What's she done?"

"Do you remember that mission in Prague?"

He remembers the cold, mostly, and the boredom, and the nauseating new-car smell that seemed to get worse and worse the longer they were stuck in it watching the mark's house and waiting for his fellow thugs to arrive with the stolen blueprints. The game of I Spy he proposed got shot down with a single perfect arched eyebrow from Roxy in the driver's seat, but eventually even she got bored enough to let the conversation turn a bit bawdy, both of them stifling giggles as they swapped stories about disastrous and spectacular hook ups. When Eggsy finished one with _and she was chewing on my neck like an overcooked steak and I was thinking I fucking shouldn't like this so why've I just come so hard I farted_ Roxy hid her face in her folded arms on the steering wheel and shook with laughter, threatening to tweet at Princess Tilde until Merlin's voice came through the car radio, _you two are having far too much fun to be allowed_ , and Harry's, _interesting information, I'll make sure it's added to your file_ , while Eggsy stared stricken at his own glasses in the sun visor mirror and mumbled, "aw shit, sorry, thought you was Enid."

"Fucksake, Harry! You weren't meant to hear that."

"No. But—" Oh. Lips on his neck again, the soft snuffle of exhalations above a trail of kisses and then the deep, pulsing pleasure of teeth sinking into the skin below his jaw. "Aren't you glad I did?"

"Creepy to use stolen intel to get people into bed. Unethical and – _no_ , fuck you, that never meant stop, do it again..."

* * *

Eggsy wakes disoriented in the unfamiliar bed, afternoon sun streaming through a window on the wrong wall throwing him for just a moment before he remembers all in a rush and tucks his face into the pillow to hide a grin. The cotton reeks, the scent of sweaty hair damp against his nose, and he twists back round with a grimace, trying to kick away the sheet he's got tangled round his bare legs.

"Oh my god. Harry, we stink."

He cracks his eyes open finally and sees the other side of the bed is empty, crumpled and stained but empty. He presses his palm to the sheet there, finding it cool, and feels a weird twinge of regret that if there's been any first-morning-after cuddling he's slept like a corpse right through the whole thing.

"You do," Harry says indignantly from somewhere. "I've showered."

"Where the fuck are you?" He glances around the room – no Harry, although there's [a taxidermy monkey thing](http://deepdarkwaters.tumblr.com/post/127411902261/i-forgot-to-link-harrys-taxidermy-tamarin-from) on top of the wardrobe that they're going to have words about – then hears a floorboard creak and shuffles on his front to the edge of the bed, chin resting on folded arms for the best show in town: Harry, shoulders still flushed from the heat of the shower, doing push-ups on the carpet wearing nothing but a pair of little black cotton boxers like the ones Eggsy watched him strip off earlier. For a minute he's a bit tongue-tied and starry-eyed, gaze lingering hungrily on the tight curved lines of muscles flexing and shifting in Harry's arms, the narrowness of his ridiculous waist and the long indentation of his spine, then he says, "If you're gonna do that at least let me get under you first, yeah?" and Harry stutters to a stop, mouth twitching like he's trying not to smile.

"Don't distract me. I've lost count now."

Eggsy unfurls one arm then and reaches down to touch him, just the gentle stroke of a single fingertip down the length of Harry's back from his nape to the elastic waistband of his pants. "I think you got as far as sixty-nine," he says innocently and Harry laughs out loud, bringing himself to his knees in front of the bed and carding his fingers lightly through Eggsy's filthy hair with a look of such unabashed fondness in his eyes that Eggsy can feel it squirming in his stomach, like the breathless anticipation at the peak of a rollercoaster climb.

"I know you're on holiday but will you stay?"

"What, like forever?"

"Well. Ideally, yes."

"Explain that monkey with the tache before I make any hasty decisions."

"HQ had a whip round for my fortieth and that's what they got me. He's an emperor tamarin."

"They all need to fucking stop encouraging you, you're out of control. If I'd seen it there earlier I woulda made it face the wall."

"He's an antique," Harry says, faintly scandalised, "and very dear to me," and Eggsy loops an arm around Harry's neck in an awkward loose hug, squirms forward on his belly to bump a clumsy kiss off the scar on his cheekbone, and murmurs in his ear, "You're an antique, and very dear to me," before getting hit hard in the face with a pillow.

They share dry cleaning trips sometimes and end up with the wrong clothes in each other's house; digging through the spare room after he showers turns up one of his suits, charcoal pinstripes, and he borrows a burgundy silk tie from Harry's wardrobe. A pair of his shoes, too, although they're a size too big. Harry eyes him over the top of the newspaper when Eggsy comes downstairs to linger in the living room doorway, gaze roaming slowly and a satisfied little smile touching the corners of his mouth as though he's really savouring this newfound permission to perv so openly.

"I thought you were planning to stay in bed for a week."

"Ain't really feeling it if you're not there too."

Harry folds the newspaper then and – fuck, he's doing that thing he does, the prim little crossing of the knees, the Disney princess slow blink, the helpless dimpled grin. Not even counting Kentucky, Eggsy's seen him snap necks with his hands as easily as flower stems, shoot out throats and kneecaps, push targets off a roof fifty storeys high to splat on the concrete below like jam dripping off a knife. He's seen him ugly with anger, cheating at cards, striding about the world in his bubble of old ingrained arrogance. He shouldn't be this fucking _cute_. It's awful. It's unfair and horrible and it shouldn't be allowed but there he is, all fucking Bambi eyelashes like he never spent half the morning sucking violent bruises into Eggsy's flesh and riding his cock til the paint chipped off the wall behind the headboard.

Eggsy accidentally sits on him and kisses him breathless for half an hour. He can't help it. 

"Shit," Harry says eventually, chest heaving hard under the press of Eggsy's palm. "I'm late."

"Nobody cares. You're always late." He lost his jacket at some point and his shirt's come untucked, Harry's hands resting warm on his bare waist beneath the fabric, fingertips drawing little circles on his skin that make Eggsy squirm against him.

"I wanted to..." His voice fades off into a pathetic breathy little moan when Eggsy drags one of his hands up and sucks a fingertip into his mouth. He's almost going cross-eyed trying to watch. "Look, all of this feels terrible when I haven't even bought you dinner yet," he tries again, then yelps like a trodden on puppy when Eggsy bites his finger hard enough to leave a ridged ring of teeth marks.

"Fuck off. None of this feels terrible."

"Forgive an old man his old-fashioned tendencies, Eggsy."

"You can buy me a bag of Monster Munch on the way to the shop if it makes you feel better."

"I'm not kissing you if you eat those," he says prissily, and Eggsy slides his fingers hard through the hair at the back of Harry's head and tells him, "You fucking are."

"Eggsy." He sounds drunk, slurring around his words and Eggsy's insistent tongue. "I need to go to work."

"I'm coming with you." He sits back on Harry's knees, tilting his crooked glasses back into place with a couple of fingertips at the side of the frames. "Best get up to date with my reports so people don't cry favouritism just cos I'm banging the boss now."

"I beg your pardon?" Arthur says in his ear, and Eggsy swears like hell and turns his glasses back off in a panic.

The shop, when they finally get there, looks... exactly the same as always. Of course it does; the world's not changed around them, as much as it feels like it has. Harry goes ahead, holding the door open for him, and it seems fitting, somehow, that this is the first time he's not been smiling like a dickhead since they left his house. Instead he looks thoughtful, almost grave, the same way he looked that night all those years ago when he sat drinking whisky on the sofa and waiting for Eggsy to come and find him.

"You alright?" Eggsy checks with him quietly – and there it is, the tiny touch of a smile and a warmth softening his eyes. He doesn't answer, he doesn't need to, he just presses his fingers gently to Eggsy's hip as he's coming through the door and somehow that says it all. The whole of the way down the lift he stays like that, possessive hand resting warm at Eggsy's side, and – fuck. After everything, after all the places they've had their fingers in the last eight hours, there's something particularly intimate about this: it's the difference between touching to get off, and touching because they can, which ironically just makes him want to return to the getting-off sort of touching as soon as possible.

They settle in the train, side by side this time instead of in opposite seats, and as they begin to speed through the tunnel towards Hertfordshire Eggsy lets his hand drop casually over the armrest between them, fingers resting gently on Harry's knee and then tapping out the first dot-dashes of a Morse code message.

_I want to_

Harry goes very still, cocking his head just slightly to the side as though he's trying to figure out whether this is on purpose or some kind of sensory trick his mind's playing on him.

_get on my knees rn_

That prompts an almost silent laugh, a sharp little exhale of air through Harry's nose, and his eyes slant sideways, looking amused, while the hand not resting on his own thigh just above Eggsy's tapping fingers makes a sort of 'be my guest' gesture towards the carriage floor.

 _is there cctv_ , he taps, and Harry murmurs, "No, but I'd advise taking off your glasses."

"Alright, smartarse, then I'd advise taking off your trousers."

He leaves his splayed fingers where they are, sliding to his knees in between Harry's feet and placing his other hand on Harry's right thigh, watching with – surely – the world's most fucking gormless starry-eyed hungry expression as Harry's hands, huge and tanned and perfectly manicured, flick his fly buttons open and shove his trousers and underwear just far enough down his legs for Eggsy to start stroking his cock to life. He's silent but for the sudden heaviness of his breathing and, finally, a wavering sigh at the first swirling touch of Eggsy's tongue.

"I'm afraid this is going to be embarrassingly quick," he says, stroking his fingertips roughly through the short cropped hair at the nape of Eggsy's neck, and Eggsy grins up at him, mouth full, fucking _delighting_ in the way that makes Harry's eyes go a bit glazed and unfocused.

"Good," he says, stroking rapidly over the hot spit-slicked flesh with only his fingers now while his mouth hovers teasingly close. "It's a quick train."

Of course it's no fucking surprise this seems to be a visual thing for Harry just as much as it's a tactile thing. He's a voyeur and exhibitionist all in one, cupping Eggsy's face between his hands, breath sticking in his throat when the bump of his cock presses the inside of Eggsy's cheek into his palm. He tilts Eggsy's face up as far as it'll go to hold his gaze, hot and hungry, as Eggsy sucks and swallows around him, mouth stretched wide and spit drooling from the corners even before Harry starts to come, silent and shaking with his mouth pressed hard against his wrist as though they're not alone and underground with nobody around for miles.

"Come here," he says, voice rough like he's the one who's just had a pretty fucking hefty cock scraping at his tonsils, and Eggsy's just about got the patience to wipe him down with his hanky and button him back inside his trousers first before he's goes where Harry's tugging hand is urging and falls on top of him, knees tucked tight between Harry's thighs and the sides of the chair. Harry's fingers move swiftly on the fastenings of Eggsy's trousers, not even taking the time to pull them down but instead spitting into the cup of his hand and grasping Eggsy through the slit of his boxers, thumb moving like magic at the top of every stroke and driving him towards the sort of spectacular finish that deserves its own multi-angle replay and intense discussion on Match of the Day. "Tell me when."

"Fucking _now_!"

Harry releases Eggsy's lower lip from between his teasing teeth and splays his hands wide across his clothed arse, dragging him up onto his knees and ducking his head to take Eggsy's cock in his mouth just as he's starting to shudder and come, arm braced against the wall behind the seat and desperate swears muffled in the wool of his jacket sleeve.

"Harry, fuck, Jesus fucking holy fuck..."

"Such blasphemy." He's still sucking, pulling off at the end of an upstroke to swallow and speak then chasing the mess of come and drool back down Eggsy's cock, swallowing around him and licking him so clean that Eggsy's hanky goes back in his pocket unused, damp only from Harry. "Brush your teeth before you talk to anybody, please," he says primly as Eggsy's collapsing back into the seat opposite with his limbs all sprawled and boneless, then he fucking picks up the copy of the Sun someone's left in the rack beside the door and starts flicking through it like that's a normal thing to do five seconds post-fellatio.

"Harry."

"Bloody hell, you'll never guess who's pregnant."

"Harry!"

Harry folds down the top corner of the paper to look at Eggsy over it. "Yes?"

"So are you my boyfriend now or what?"

His expression twists a bit and settles into one suggesting he's just got a whiff of someone's fart. "I hate that word."

"You can be my mistress," Eggsy says with a grin and Harry blinks at him then goes back to his gossip pages.

"You can be _my_ mistress," he says, clearly trying to pretend like there's not the biggest dumbest dimples in his cheeks where his smile's giving him away.

"Done. Kiss to seal it?"

But there's the hiss of static before Harry can reply, and then Merlin's voice coming from somewhere overhead. "Guinevere, Galahad – pull the emergency brake, please."

Harry stands up and does it without question because Eggsy's too busy going wide-eyed and accusing, "Thought you said there's no cameras!"

"There aren't, there's only the intercom." He finds his glasses in his pocket and slips them on, and Eggsy does the same.

"Nice of you to finally join us," Merlin says, cool and deadpan as ever as the train's shuddering to a stop in the tunnel. Eggsy just about manages to resist the urge to roll his eyes. "You're about twelve feet from a ladder to the surface. Take it. There's a car parked there, should respond to either of your passwords."

Harry's already hitting the button to open the doors. "Problems with the train?"

"No." There's the murmur of voices in the background, then Merlin again: "Two planes went through our airspace half an hour ago. Could be nothing, they veered away when we spoke to them so they could've just been lost, but Arthur's not taking any chances. The recruits are halfway through a ten mile run, they'll appreciate a lift back to HQ."

Eggsy starts climbing first, clanging up the metal ladder into darkness. "Must be worried if you're cutting a torture session short."

"Not cutting short. Rescheduling. Prolonging."

"Sadist." He swears harshly when he bangs his head and reaches up to look for a way to open the trapdoor or manhole cover or whatever the fuck it is, finding a rusty handle and managing to squeak it open without losing his footing and tumbling back down to the tracks. The sun is low in the sky by this time of day but still dazzling bright after the black of the tunnel, making Eggsy squint and wish he'd got ugly old man reaction lenses like Harry's. "So what—"

"For fuck's sake," Merlin mutters. "Galahad, passing you to Enid."

He can hear her before she speaks to him, talking rapidly with someone in the background. "Galahad," she says after a moment, as he's offering Harry a hand through the trapdoor and getting an irritable I'm-not-old look in return. "Listen, everything's a bit nuts, I've got you and Pelleas and old Tristan and young Lionel while we're waiting for team backup so bear with me, alright?"

"Yeah, what's—"

"Margaret, don't be a dick, you haven't got the manoeuvring capabilities to take them on with a jet that size – sorry, Galahad, be right with you – listen, land if it's safe, if you can't then I'll arrange for you to land at Bovingdon. Pelleas, best get your parachute on, we need you down here asap."

"Tell her not to get shot else grandad's gonna fucking murder me."

"Er, Pelleas, Galahad says don't get shot. Yeah. She says, quote, mind your own business."

"Fair enough."

The Land Rover unlocks at Harry's password, which is _Mr Pickle_ because Harry's an idiot, but he races round to the passenger side and lets Eggsy get behind the wheel, so maybe he's not so much of an idiot after all. They pull out from the lay by and the souped-up engine jumps gorgeously fast to ninety miles an hour, flying around the bends of the winding little country roads towards HQ.

"Enid." Harry's not even ruffled. He's the only person who can sit in a car Eggsy's driving and not look a bit ill or frightened for his life.

"Guinevere, sir." Her voice is coming through the radio speakers now.

"Can you tell me what's happening?"

"Ugly little Pipistrel something, Taurus or Virus. Thought someone just got lost, but he flew over again and brought a friend, then they buggered off and now there's a swarm of, I don't know what but they look pretty vintage – Margaret, what are they? Reckon the first couple were scouts. These new guys mean business, one of them just tried to bomb the K. I mean, the plane lift's as reinforced as you can get, it's holding for now, but let's hope they don't go for the house. Sir, Margaret says they're 1969 Harriers."

"Hm." He's got his thinking face on when Eggsy glances at him sideways, all pursed lips and frowning eyebrows. "Did you say you've got Tristan?"

"Yes, sir, shall I patch her through?"

"Please."

"Thank you for not calling me _old Tristan_ ," Audrey says, sounding amused. "69 Harriers?"

"Yes. Little outdated for an attack, aren't they, considering the advances in technology and such?"

Up ahead Eggsy sees the four remaining recruits running down the road in a straggling line, weighted down with rucksacks, and their dogs – no longer tiny puppies, and none of them pugs – keeping pace beside them. He overtakes them and pulls in, flashing his lights for them to stop. "Be right back," he says and Harry nods, frowning at whatever Audrey's saying which Eggsy can't hear now he's out the car.

"Sir," the first recruit says, coming to a halt in front of him and wiping her sweating forehead on her wrist. She's Roxy's candidate, a friend she had kickboxing lessons with as a teenager, who's taking to this new world of guns and espionage like she was born for it. Eggsy's had a fiver in the pool for her to win since the second week.

"Maryam. Gentlemen," he adds as the boys catch up. His own candidate, Jack – poached from the Marines, where he'd been Eggsy's first friend since leaving home – gives him a grin, like always, still not quite used to the swish new suits and posh accent. "This is not a drill, nor is it the sort of bluff where saying it's not a drill is part of the test. Looks like HQ is under attack, so it's all hands on deck. Get in."

He half expects them to act dubious – he's pretty sure he wouldn't have trusted Merlin if he'd said the same thing to their group, although that's in hindsight knowing what he does about Amelia and the train tracks and parachute – but there's only a brief flicker of a glance between them all before they're climbing into the back of the Rover, squashing up to fit in with the four dogs. Eggsy gets them back in motion immediately and Harry, because he's Harry, twists round to politely say, "Good afternoon," and pet the nearest dog.

"Tristan any help?"

"Nasty bit of drama in 1978 when Kay and Lamorak stole a plane from HQ to launch an attack on the arms dealer who killed Ector during a mission."

"Let me guess. A Harrier."

"Mm. They were fired, of course."

"Executed?" He can see the recruits in the rear view mirror, studiously trying to make it look as if they're not paying extra attention to this part.

"Of course not, we're not barbarians. Arthur at the time accepted that they were acting under extreme stress, but—"

"That's what we're trained for."

"Precisely," Audrey says through the speakers. "It went against every bit of protocol and shattered the undercover mission Percival and I were just about to bring to a close. Their actions set things back by years, the ringleader wasn't caught until the eighties. It would have been suspension and re-training, but they became so belligerent about the whole thing that Arthur had no choice but to dismiss them and wipe their memories of the organisation. Here's the thing, Galahad. Do you remember Monaco?"

"Yeah?"

"Those two snooty ladies and their lapdog who sat next to us on the beach."

"You're kidding me."

"Afraid not. Betty Aylwood and Joan Wetherby. The fellow they were with was Aylwood's proposal for Gareth in the seventies, but he didn't make it. Lillian's theory is that seeing me and Kate unexpectedly like that might have jogged their memories. The amnesia darts back then weren't as stable as they are now."

"What's her theory on the ridiculous antique planes?" Harry asks grimly, and Enid interrupts to say, "I'd play you the recording, sir, but it'd turn the air so blue it'd shock even you."

Audrey again: "Yes. The only thing she despises more than being fallible is a villain with a meaningful symbolic weapon. Like something from a silly old spy film."

"Silly old spy films are the best sort." Harry glances over at Eggsy, then over his shoulder at the silent recruits in the back. "How do we combat a villain with a silly weapon?"

They all look at each other, like they're uncertain this is actually for real. "A hero with a sillier one?" Timothy says haltingly, and Harry looks pleased.

"Enid, we'll be at HQ in three minutes. Has Arthur already manned the guns?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good, then tell the tech team to stand by with whatever nonsense they're working on as a backup. I recall hearing a ridiculous rumour about a huge butterfly net..."

The main gate to the house comes into view after the next bend; Eggsy bypasses it and carries on around to the back entrance where there's a bit more cover and a ramp down to the garage. When he pulls up in a parking slot and they all pile out the car, Arthur's there striding across the concrete and speaking rapidly to someone though her glasses, shrugging into a tweed suit jacket that covers up the loaded holsters she's wearing over her shirt. She's as elegant as ever, but there's something sharp and dangerous in her eyes; it makes her look magnificent, like some imperious queen from mythology, and Eggsy smirks sideways at Harry until he realises he's got his Judith-face on and carefully rearranges his soft idiot smile into a pursed-lips frown more befitting the situation.

"Recruits to the handlers' department, please," Arthur says as she meets them halfway. "We're locking it down in two minutes. Safest place in the building."

The recruits glance at each other, then at Eggsy and Harry like they're still trying to figure out whether this actually is some kind of test. Rupert says, "Can we do anything to help?" and Arthur manages a tiny, tight little smile.

"No heroics. Will you promise to follow orders and nothing else?"

"Of course."

"Good. Timothy and Maryam, join the snipers at the east side of the roof. Jack and Rupert, the SAMs at the back steps. Go now, I'll let them know you're coming. Galahad," she says, when they've all sped off to the lifts, "Guinevere, we've sensor reports of a broken window in the first floor library."

"On it," Eggsy says, already running for the stairs with Harry only a step behind him. "Enid, you still there?"

"All yours, sir, passed the others off to backup."

"Me and Guinny heading for the first floor north corridor. Anything we should know about?"

"My name is Guinevere," Harry mutters, overtaking him on a bend in the staircase.

"Four heat signatures. Walk in the park for you two, hey?"

"Yeah, I always heard if something sounds too good to be true it probably is." Harry slows ahead of him, holding out a warning arm as they come to the top landing of the stairwell and then starting to inch the door open to peer out. Eggsy glares at the arm, ducks under it so he can see as well, and says to Enid, "Where exactly's these heat signatures, then?"

"Two at the far end of the corridor, two in the library. Oh wait. Bugger. There's six now. Ten. Dan," she calls to one of the other handlers, "detonate the library windows, they must have ladders or something. Gents, we're gonna cut them off the other side, can you clean up in here?"

"Let's go in dark," Harry murmurs. "Enid, could you turn off the lights? Close the shutters too."

"Done." The bulbs overhead flicker into blackness and Eggsy switches his glasses to night vision. The corridor, when Harry noiselessly opens the door, is brighter than the stairwell, twilight showing through the huge windows at either end turning the polished wood panels and plush carpeting into a murky sort of contrastless dreamscape until the thick metal shutters slide down and block out the last of the light. "Dan's blowing the windows in three, two, one—" Eggsy hears the roaring crash of explosion and fire, splintering glass and yells of pain from inside the library. "Alright," Enid says, "looks like that took out the buggers on the ladders and three of them in the room, so you've got nine."

"Easy." Eggsy grins up at Harry. "Ready?"

"Always."

The firefight is the first part, dashing out from the stairwell and taking cover behind a grandfather clock and a pillar closer to the library door so they can pick off the enemy with stun darts as they make their exit. They're still too far away to be completely on target but at least they've got the benefit of night vision; between them they knock out five of the intruders before their watches run out of darts, and then take out their pistols and creep silently along the corridor, blindly-shot bullets deflected by their suits. Eggsy thinks, like always, _one day we'll get shot in the head_ , and tries to stamp down on all the messy emotional baggage that shit comes with.

"If I can make a suggestion," Enid says, "don't shoot. You'll just let them know where you are. They can't see in the dark. Quiet as you can and knock the pricks out."

It's one of the weirdest, most disorienting fights he's ever had, blackness all around his periphery except for the smouldering orange remains of the window blasts, glasses showing everything else in eerie hues of glowing green. Harry just ahead of him swerves to the left to throw a sudden punch and Eggsy takes his cue, flinging himself to the right and leaping at the guy there who squawks in surprise at the arm suddenly hooked and squeezing round his neck until Eggsy knocks him unconscious with a crashing blow to the head from the handle of his gun.

"Two down," Enid says. "One's in the far corner, one's..." Her voice fades into nothing, then comes back sharper. "Shit, I'm so sorry, I didn't realise one of them's old Lionel, he's in the chair by the fire. Swear that man could sleep through the apocalypse. Leave that neck unbroken, alright?"

Eggsy nods so she'll see the dip of the glasses camera and starts to move towards the corner, Harry closing in from the other side. It's harder to be quiet in here than it was in the carpeted corridor, the tap of their shoes on the floorboards gives them away: the last man standing cocks his head like a dog to listen, raising his gun and shooting until it's empty. Bullets ping off Eggsy's jacket or compact themselves in the fabric, some of them miss, one of them grazes the side of his hand and sets a bolt of flaring hot pain rocketing up his arm, and one by some stroke of shitty luck finds the only Kingsman body in the room that's not covered by a jacket.

"Good _fucking lord_ ," Basil yells from over by the fireplace, and Eggsy panics and says, "Enid, lights." The lamps and electric chandelier all burst into brilliance at once and the intruder takes Harry's moment of hesitation, squinting and flicking his glasses back to normal vision, as his chance for an attack: racing at Harry, colliding with him, somehow managing to pry his gun from his grip and throw it across the room, although it's not much of an advantage because his own gun just clicks hollowly when he tries to fire, empty and useless. He's the same guy Eggsy saw on the beach in Monaco, one of the people Audrey was trying to avoid, and he's grinning like a madman in a stupid old film as he raises his fists. Harry just blinks at him calmly, then raises his own as well as his eyebrow, slow and arching, menacing in a way that a fucking _eyebrow_ shouldn't be able to manage.

"How bad's he hit?" Enid asks, and Eggsy legs it over to where Basil's trying to stand up out of his armchair, catching him by the arm and round the waist when his legs go weak and easing him down to lie on the rug.

"Alright, bruv, let's have a look at you, yeah?" He grabs his knife from his inside pocket, tearing through Basil's soaking red shirt like it's tissue paper and folding back the tatters to get to where he's bleeding. "Aw, mate, wish you'd been wearing your jacket."

"Warm in here," Basil says faintly. "Didn't think I'd need armour in bloody HQ."

"You're alright, it's just your arm, don't think it's even hit the bone. Bet you got well worse than this back in the day, right?" He slides the cut away shirt sleeve right off and folds it small, pressing it to the gunshot tear near Basil's shoulder. "Hey, Enid, can you page a medic if anyone's free? Shot clean through the muscle, coulda been worse but he's bleeding like fuck."

"On it."

"I'm never sleeping again. Wake up and the world's ending."

"Alright, drama queen," Eggsy mutters, and Basil gives him a wavering half-laugh. He's breathing a bit funny, maybe it's the shock. "Lie still, alright? Medics on their way, we'll get you out of this shitshow." He twists back to see how Harry's doing, watching him duck and swerve. There's a rising bruise on his cheekbone and the other guy's nose is crushed and bleeding. "Needs his Rainmaker," he says, unaware he's said it out loud until Basil's struggling to sit up. "Hey, I said still!"

"I've got something better than a Rainmaker."

Clawing a scrap of strength from somewhere, Basil tosses his cane to Harry. Eggsy's always been pretty sure it's not just for walking, not with the pimped-out umbrellas and shoes and shit everyone's got, and kind of expects it to start blowing out bullets or toxic smoke or something from the end – but Harry presses the Kingsman logo engraved into the gold band near the handle, the stick part falls away, and suddenly he's brandishing a fucking _sword_ at the prick he's battling.

"Oh, beautiful," Basil says happily, even as his blood's pumping out of his arm all over Eggsy's hands.

"I don't disagree, but be quiet, alright? Don't talk, you just been shot. Fucksake, lie _still_ ," Eggsy urges as Basil's trying to lift himself up on his elbow for a better view. Across the room, the guy with the perv pencil moustache is ducking under the swing of Harry's blade and snatching one of the ornamental swords from above the fireplace, spinning back round to meet him with a singing clash of metal on metal. "Hey, Enid, pretty sure someone's about to get stabbed, too." He's trying to keep pressure on Basil's shoulder and aim his pistol at the guy Harry's fighting, but it's impossible to concentrate on either while Basil's yelling praise and instructions and Harry's weaving all over the fucking room in a blur of limbs and blades and getting in the way of a clean shot.

"Bloody disgrace, Hawthorne, you're wide open! I taught you better than this."

"Oi, whose side are you on? Lie still or I'll stun you with your own watch." He aims again, holds his breath, finds a gap in the flail and crash of swords and squeezes the trigger, missing but just clipping the very edge of Hawthorne's ear so he howls in pain. Harry takes the chance to lunge in and smack him hard in the bleeding ear with the cane sword handle, knocking him down to one knee and thrusting his blade dead at Hawthorne's heart, but the bastard somehow manages to roll away and block the blow and the fight starts up again, blades thrumming through the air like a wet fingertip slid along the rim of a crystal wine glass and meeting again and again between them, percussive and relentless. Harry's on fucking fire, face set expressionless the way it always is when he gives himself over to his flawless honed instincts: it's like he's not even thinking, he's reacting far too fast for thought, blocking and attacking fluidly like he's been animated, like a ballet. Eggsy shoots again, this time landing right in the meat of Hawthorne's thigh so his leg goes out from under him.

"Not very sporting of you," Basil says. His voice is weak, weirdly thick like he's talking around a mouthful of water; when Eggsy looks down at him a minute later after taking another couple of shots he's expecting to see something horrifying like blood bubbling between his teeth but there's nothing there, just ashy skin and blue lips and a disturbing lack of movement.

" _Shit_ ," he yells, pressing his fingertips above Basil's collar, "Enid, seriously, he ain't breathing now. His pulse is all weird, I think it's stopped.

"CPR," she instructs him, quick and calm like always. "Medics stuck in a shootout in the infirmary, they'll be with you soon as."

"Ah, mate, sorry about this," he mutters, "gonna hurt like fuck," leaning down to breathe for him then trying not to slip in the spill of blood from Basil's shoulder wound as he starts chest compressions. "Losing your touch," he calls over to Harry, "ain't he finished yet?"

And maybe that's the kick in the arse he needed or maybe it was just flukey timing on Eggsy's part but there's the scrape-swish of blades colliding and then a sickening gurgle and the thump of a body hitting the floor. "Now he is," Harry says calmly, stepping over the dying man and dropping to his knees beside Eggsy. "I'll take over. Go and clear a path for the medics, quickly."

He doesn't make it that far; the end of the corridor is blocked by Lillian, Lucan behind her, blood-smeared and wild-eyed, Merlin with his beloved gun, and Vincent holding himself steady on Merlin's shoulder because he's got a sword in his other hand too instead of his walking stick. "Need to get to the infirmary," Eggsy says, "come and help," but Lillian swerves around him and calls back over her shoulder, "Enid said there's no time, we'll have to make do," so he does an about turn and races back into the library after her with the others. It's all a little bit too many cooks after that: Harry still tirelessly working at the CPR, Merlin and Lucan trying to stop Vincent sinking to his knees on Basil's other side and then giving up and helping him down when he doesn't listen.

"Come on, old thing," he mutters, holding Basil's cool hand between both of his own, "what sort of an age is 94 to die? We've years ahead of us yet. You won't let Laurie outlive you, surely."

"For goodness sake," Lillian says impatiently, "do none of you ever read the instruction manuals?" She tears the elbow patches off her jacket – they come away easily, they look stuck instead of sewn – and hands them to Lucan, gesturing with her palms on her own chest. "Unfasten his shirt. Peel off the backings and put them here, and here. Use your signet, half power. Merlin, yours too." Harry backs off long enough for the shock, then goes back to the CPR. "I don't invent these things for the fun of it, you know, it's—"

"Hang on a minute," Lucan says, "that modification's not _in_ the manual, it's still with the copywriters."

She stares up at him sharply, and for a moment Eggsy thinks Lucan's going to break apart in fear, but he stands his ground until Lillian actually cocks her head to the side and half-smiles at him. "Good lord, I think you're right. I beg your pardon, gentlemen. Get that door for me, would you?" She wheels away with Lucan walking ahead of her, looking vaguely stunned like he's not sure what's going on.

"Can I do anything?" Eggsy asks helplessly.

"Another shock," Harry says, breathless and sweating. It's only been a couple of minutes but the fight seems to have caught up with him, hair hanging over one eye until he tosses his head and flips it back out of the way. "Let him go," he says more gently to Vincent, who nods mutely and shuffles back a little way so Eggsy can touch his signet to the patch on Basil's chest. "Let's try this again – there we go," Harry murmurs, pleasure and relief in his voice when he presses his fingers against Basil's pulse again and apparently finds it beating like it should after the second shock. He sits back on his heels, wiping his forehead dry with his cuff, and that's when the medics finally come barrelling into the room with a stretcher and all sorts of equipment that Eggsy's still sick to death of seeing after all those months lurking by Harry's bed waiting for him to wake. They get Basil strapped in, bully Vincent into a wheelchair despite his angry protests about being able to walk, and speed out into the corridor back to the infirmary.

Eggsy sits on the floor between Harry and Merlin and they all look at each other for a while.

Then Merlin says, "I think you owe me some money," and Harry scowls. "Ten pounds, adjusted for inflation since 1986, would be about, what, twenty-eight?"

"Absolutely not. It's still speculation."

"No, no, no. That was a blatant lovers' deathbed moment."

"What the fuck?" Eggsy asks, and Harry looks at him with that precious tired lilting smile.

"Merlin has some ridiculous notion that they're a couple."

"Oh. To be honest, babe, after that it actually don't seem all that crazy to me." He realises Merlin's smirking at him at the same same as he realises what he said. "Oh fuck."

"You've just won me ten pounds each from Vincent and Robert as well."

"Stop betting on people's love lives," Harry says. He looks mildly disgruntled, but not embarrassed. Cat officially out the bag, then, so there's no reason for Eggsy not to shuffle on his arse across the few feet of floorboards between them and tuck himself under Harry's arm, leaning heavy against his shoulder and smiling tiredly when he feels the press of lips against his temple.

"I'll leave you to it," Merlin says as he's getting up to go. "Too much drama for one night without having to witness this too."

Eggsy's phone buzzes in his pocket, a text from Roxy: _Wtf did I miss??? My mission's on hold bc Dan said the place is on fire?_

"Smile for Roxy," Eggsy tells Harry, opening the front camera, but Harry smirks instead, lifts Eggsy's chin with insistent fingers, and kisses him as the shutter sounds.

He captions it _Something's on fire_ and sends it to Sicily, then puts his phone away, hauls Harry to his feet, and goes to help clear up.

* * *

Merlin's making tea again in the Berkeley Square living room, sending plates of tiny adorable sandwiches around the current agents and new agents and retired agents all crowded around the fire, sharing seats and ottomans and every spare spot on the carpet. Eggsy briefly considers making another dig about the hostess with the mostest but Merlin's too good, he knows it's coming and his eyes go all narrow and scary like they did in training, so he backs off meekly and wanders over to wriggle his arse into the tiny space on the sofa between Jack and Maryam, the new Bors and Bedivere. Across the room Tim and Rupert, Lamorak and Ector now, are listening starry-eyed to a meandering story Robert and Audrey are passing back and forth about some mission they went on in the sixties. Paul's in one of the chairs, Katharine perched on the arm of it and smiling softly when he takes a breath in his conversation with Roxy to bump a little kiss off her cheekbone and touch her hand, still bandaged from the cracking knockout punches she gave Aylwood and Wetherby when she tracked them down near the armoury during the attack on HQ. 

Harry's on a mission in Washington, which is nice because it means they can talk behind his back.

"Would you?" Eggsy says to Arthur, who he really has to start calling Judith again now she's re-retired. "Like, _ever_? If he tried it on, would you have gone for it?"

"Of course not," she says, demurely sipping her tea, "he's far too old for me," and Eggsy cracks up laughing and files it away in his mind in case he ever needs to break Harry's heart. "Besides, he seems rather smitten with somebody younger and lovelier these days."

"Yeah," Eggsy says grimly, handing her his phone to show off some of the several billion photos Harry's sent from Washington, "JB. Training him to sniff out bombs and stuff now cos nobody's gonna suspect a pug. Swear he's only putting up with me cos he wants my dog, it's sickening." But he takes his phone back and hides it in his pocket before she can swipe too far and see the screenshotted Snapchat selfie from the day before, Harry lying in his hotel bed at the break of dawn with his hair all fluffed up in curls and the red creases of the pillow imprinted on his cheek, and the caption emoji shades, see you soon, emoji fried egg. Partly because it's fucking ridiculous, but mostly because it's his. He definitely doesn't want her seeing the photo after that, Harry's long fingers curled close around the hard curve of his cock, the gentle delineation of his abs scattered wet and white, and the caption _good god I miss you_.

Lillian politely declined the offer to retire again, and then very rudely declined it when they asked if she was sure that reaching a hundred and one hadn't earned her a rest. Her usual spot by the fire is taken by Basil now, looking dapper in his best suit and tie with ivory ribbons woven through the spokes of his wheelchair by some of the nurses he charmed while he was recovering from his fibrillation. Beside him, Vincent is half listening to him speak, half just staring with a tiny fond smile on his face at the engraved names on the matching swords the others whipped round to buy them as a wedding present. Harry's still being fucking stubborn, demanding to see a certificate before he gives Merlin his money like he thinks this is all just some elaborate lie to trick him while he's out of the country.

"Hey, Eggs," Roxy says, tipping her head back to smile at him upside down when she shuffles over to sit on the carpet in front of him, leaning against his knees.

"Hey, Rox."

She twists to press a kiss to the hand he puts on her shoulder. "You fancy taking fencing lessons with me?"

Eggsy looks over toward the fire, Basil's wrinkled hand brushing fingertips across the engraved names and the soft way Vincent's watching his face now. He's pretty sure he's not going to be able to hold a sword or watch a Zorro film for the rest of his life without feeling a bit swoony and lovesick, remembering this, remembering the way Harry fought in the library the way he does everything else in his life: with ease and grace and devastating panache. _Fucksake_ , he thinks, _requited love is even fucking worse_.

"I mean," Roxy goes on lightly, "obviously I'll beat the hell out of you every time, but—"

Eggsy tugs her ponytail and she laughs out loud, bright and beautiful in the quiet murmur of the room.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Come and flail with me [on tumblr](http://deepdarkwaters.tumblr.com)! If you want endless reblogs of Colin Firth's glorious face from every flawless angle, I am your lady.
> 
> eta: I've made this a series! Subscribe to Flame Keepers (and/or track that tag on tumblr) for backstories, companion stories, deleted scenes, and soooo much gratuitous bonus porn.


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